Gingerbread Peanut Butter! With peanuts, cinnamon, ginger, brown sugar, and molasses this homemade nut butter is festive, creamy, and delicious!
💌 SAVE THIS RECIPE!
Enter your email and I'll send the link straight to your inbox.
Watch out for more tasty treats coming your way too! Unsubscribe at any time.
Peanut Butter with a festive twist! With sugar and spice and all things nice this Gingerbread Peanut Butter is utterly delicious and perfect to enjoy during the holiday season.
In this post:
Ingredients
Peanut Butter is wonderful as it is but add a few extras and it becomes something really special! Here are the ingredients you need to make Gingerbread Peanut Butter along with some notes:
- Peanuts - I like to use raw peanuts and roast them myself. I find that they blend better than using store-bought roasted peanuts.
- Sugar - Dark brown sugar gives the best gingerbread flavor but you can use regular brown sugar if it's all you have. Coconut sugar also works well.
- Spices - A combination of cinnamon, ginger, and salt for lots of warm, festive flavor.
- Molasses - Unsulphured, dark, or blackstrap molasses. This is key to a proper gingerbread flavor.
Want to try a fun variation? This recipe works really well with almonds instead of peanuts.
How To Make Gingerbread Peanut Butter
First, roast the peanuts. This enhances their flavor and helps to release the natural oils, making blending much easier. Then blend. Something magical happens to those peanuts when they hit the blades of a food processor. They become drippy, melty, and buttery with no effort from you at all.
The key here is patience and pushing through the grainy phase. Don't give up. Magic will happen! The time it takes will depend on the power of your blender/food processor. In my powerful Cuisinart food processor it takes about 10 minutes. Once it has become drippy and smooth the sugar, molasses, and spices all go in for a quick spin, and then you're done!
Storage Tips
Store Gingerbread Peanut Butter in a glass jar in the pantry or the refrigerator. In the pantry, it will stay creamier and looser and will keep for about 3 weeks. In the fridge it will become a little firmer but will keep for a few weeks longer.
How To Use Gingerbread Peanut Butter
Gingerbread Peanut Butter can be used in any way you would regular peanut butter. Some of my favorite ways to use it are:
- On sliced bread, English muffins, or toast. A sprinkle of chocolate chips on the top is a really nice addition too!
- With bananas or apple slices.
- On oatmeal.
- Spread on slices of banana bread or vegan graham crackers.
- On banana waffles.
- With vegan banana pancakes or gingerbread pancakes.
- In a banana smoothie.
It also makes a lovely gift for friends or family at Christmas. Spoon into a clean mason jar, tie some twine or ribbon around the top with a cute tag and you're good to go. People love to know that you put thought into their gift and spent your time making them something special!
Recipe FAQs
Problems blending can happen if your food processor/blender isn't quite up to the job, if the peanuts haven't been roasted, or due to the quality of the peanuts used. Quality, environment during distribution and storage, and packaging varies hugely and this can affect how they blend. If you are struggling, add a little neutral oil to the blender or food processor one tablespoon at a time until things get going and it starts turning creamy.
Roasting adds lots more nutty flavor and helps to release the natural oils in the peanuts which makes blending a lot easier. If using a good food processor you should be able to get away without roasting them. If you are using a blender I do not recommend not roasting the peanutss unless you are ok with adding a tablespoon or two of oil to help get things going.
Yes. This recipe will work with almonds, cashews, pecans and walnuts etc.
I recommend using raw nuts and roasting them yourself if you can because they will blend much more easily when warm and freshly roasted. You can use storebought ones if you prefer but it will take a bit more time to get them blended up.
More Ginger Recipes
Recipe
Gingerbread Peanut Butter
Author:Ingredients
- 3 cups (450 grams) raw shelled peanuts
- 4 tablespoons dark brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon molasses , unsulphured, dark, or blackstrap
- 3 teaspoons ground ginger
- 1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
RECOMMENDED EQUIPMENT
INSTRUCTIONS
- Preheat your oven to 350 °F (176°C). Spread the peanuts out on a baking tray and roast for 20 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool enough to handle. Don't put them in your food processor while hot as the plastic could melt. They do blend better if they are still warm though.
- Add just the peanuts to a food processor and blend until a smooth, creamy nut butter forms. It will take a while. First, it will turn crumby, then thick and grainy. Keep going and it will eventually become melty, runny, and drippy. It usually takes 10 to 15 minutes in my food processor. Patience is key. If your food processor gets too warm turn it off and give it a break before continuing.
- Once you have reached the melty, glossy, runny stage you can add the sugar, molasses, ginger, cinnamon, and salt. Process again until well combined. Taste and add more ginger, cinnamon, or sugar if you want stronger flavors. Give it a quick few pulses again to combine.
- Spoon the gingerbread peanut butter into clean jars.
NOTES
💌 SAVE THIS RECIPE!
Enter your email and I'll send the link straight to your inbox.
Watch out for more tasty treats coming your way too! Unsubscribe at any time.
Lucy says
I used some peanuts ready-roasted in their shell which I shelled myself, but lost my nerve and didn't really process it for long enough - maybe they were a bit dry anyway - as I was afraid of overworking and breaking my little push-down blender. So I added a bit of hot water and a bit of oil at the end. It was delicious anyway, and quite smooth but just not quite at the drippy stage. I had it today on a wholewheat English muffin with some sliced banana, miam miam!
Colleen says
I tried this today and incorporated it into a Banana-Stuffed Baked French Toast recipe. While we enjoyed the flavors, mine came out very thick and I ended up combining it with some peanut butter from my pantry to achieve the right consistency. What I suspect happened is that I chose to grind my peanut butter at the store, rather than use the food processor, and didn't know what quantity of peanut butter I should use. I made a guess and suspect I had less than necessary, resulting in the dry ingredients have too great an effect on the consistency. With that in mind, if we choose to use peanut butter already ground, what is the approximate quantity?
Ashley says
OMG I loved making this! I actually gave jars of it to some people as gifts last year and they loved it!
yvonne says
this is pretty awesome! I used my vitamix to prepare it and instead of trying to get it all off of the blades---- I added a chilled banana and some cold water and blended it up for a drink !
thank you for the inspiration .
A Virtual Vegan says
So glad you enjoyed it Yvonne and I love your idea for 'cleaning' the blender. I need to remember to do that next time I make nut butter.