I was amused that Stella Parks recommends using a bikini top cookie cutter to make her Homemade Nutter Butter Cookies in Bravetart. Even though I easily found such cutters online, I also looked for a specific peanut cutter. In particular, I wanted to find one that included an embosser to create the peanut shell texture. After a bit of Googling, I found a merchant in Australia selling a peanut cutter and embosser set for $9 AUD (about $7 USD). Last year I got a new credit card with zero foreign transaction fees, so I'm happy to make purchases denominated in foreign currency from international websites. And because the site had a flat shipping charge, I added a few other fun items into my cart before checking out.
Once my cutter and embosser arrived, I couldn't wait to make my own Nutter Butters. The dough is pretty simple. You cream butter, creamy peanut butter, sugar, baking soda, and salt until light and fluffy; add egg whites; and mix in flour. I rolled out the dough immediately between two sheets of parchment without using any flour. The embosser I purchased creates a raised pattern on the cookie and I rolled out the dough a little on the thick side because I wanted to make sure that the cookie wouldn't be too thin after embossing. Using the embosser was a bit tricky. I had to dip it in flour before printing each cookie, and I still had some sticking problems where I had to dig cookie dough out of the crevices of the embosser with a toothpick. But I was able to re-roll all of the scraps repeatedly without a problem, so eventually I was able to emboss and cut all of the dough. The peanut cutter I have is 3.5-inches long and I ended up with 32 cookies.
Making the filling was far easier. You just beat butter, creamy peanut butter, honey, vanilla, salt, and powdered sugar until soft and light. I put the filling into a piping bag fitted with a large plain tip to fill the sandwiches. I chilled the assembled cookies briefly to set the filling and served them at room temperature.
I love the way these cookies look after using the embosser. They looked pretty darn close to the real thing except for the fact that they were so large (for comparison, the photo above shows my homemade Nutter Butters on the left and the real thing on the right). I think the appearance of the raised texture is much nicer than what you could achieve by just scoring the dough (the technique Stella recommends in her cookbook, as shown in the photo here), and far less cumbersome than what she prescribed with a previous version of this recipe, which required piping thinned cookie dough into the shell design on each individual cookie. I absolutely think the peanut cutter and embosser were worth it.
My cookies were super crunchy but I had made them too thick; they were so firm that it was difficult to bite through both layers of the sandwich and the soft filling squished out from the pressure of a bite. That said, they tasted really good. I subsequently made another batch and rolled the dough thinner, to 1/8-inch (using pastry rulers). This time I got 44 cookies from a batch of dough and the finished cookies were much more manageable; the cookies in the photo above are from my more successful second attempt. The filling still tended to squish out while eating a cookie, but I think this is probably unavoidable to some extent because the filling stayed soft, even after chilling it briefly to set it. I also think the homemade filling tastes less peanut-y than the real thing -- which to me almost tastes like straight peanut butter.
I will note that I didn't use the organic powdered sugar specified in the recipe -- which Stella says makes a difference due to its inclusion of tapioca starch -- so I can't rule out that using conventional powdered sugar made my filling too soft. I might actually go to the trouble of picking up some organic powdered sugar to see if it's an improvement. I also might experiment with using a whole egg instead of two egg whites in this recipe to see if I can get a cookie that is slighter more tender. I love a crunchy cookie as much as anyone else, but this one is crunchy to the extreme and I would prefer to be able to eat a cookie with the filling intact.
I really love these cookies. They're definitely different from a real Nutter Butter, but just as good. Plus, they're a lot of fun -- just looking at one makes me smile.
Recipe: "Nutter Butters" from Bravetart by Stella Parks, recipe available here from epicurious.com.
Previous Post: "The Better Nutter Butter: The Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookie," January 13, 2014.
Once my cutter and embosser arrived, I couldn't wait to make my own Nutter Butters. The dough is pretty simple. You cream butter, creamy peanut butter, sugar, baking soda, and salt until light and fluffy; add egg whites; and mix in flour. I rolled out the dough immediately between two sheets of parchment without using any flour. The embosser I purchased creates a raised pattern on the cookie and I rolled out the dough a little on the thick side because I wanted to make sure that the cookie wouldn't be too thin after embossing. Using the embosser was a bit tricky. I had to dip it in flour before printing each cookie, and I still had some sticking problems where I had to dig cookie dough out of the crevices of the embosser with a toothpick. But I was able to re-roll all of the scraps repeatedly without a problem, so eventually I was able to emboss and cut all of the dough. The peanut cutter I have is 3.5-inches long and I ended up with 32 cookies.
I love the way these cookies look after using the embosser. They looked pretty darn close to the real thing except for the fact that they were so large (for comparison, the photo above shows my homemade Nutter Butters on the left and the real thing on the right). I think the appearance of the raised texture is much nicer than what you could achieve by just scoring the dough (the technique Stella recommends in her cookbook, as shown in the photo here), and far less cumbersome than what she prescribed with a previous version of this recipe, which required piping thinned cookie dough into the shell design on each individual cookie. I absolutely think the peanut cutter and embosser were worth it.
My cookies were super crunchy but I had made them too thick; they were so firm that it was difficult to bite through both layers of the sandwich and the soft filling squished out from the pressure of a bite. That said, they tasted really good. I subsequently made another batch and rolled the dough thinner, to 1/8-inch (using pastry rulers). This time I got 44 cookies from a batch of dough and the finished cookies were much more manageable; the cookies in the photo above are from my more successful second attempt. The filling still tended to squish out while eating a cookie, but I think this is probably unavoidable to some extent because the filling stayed soft, even after chilling it briefly to set it. I also think the homemade filling tastes less peanut-y than the real thing -- which to me almost tastes like straight peanut butter.
I will note that I didn't use the organic powdered sugar specified in the recipe -- which Stella says makes a difference due to its inclusion of tapioca starch -- so I can't rule out that using conventional powdered sugar made my filling too soft. I might actually go to the trouble of picking up some organic powdered sugar to see if it's an improvement. I also might experiment with using a whole egg instead of two egg whites in this recipe to see if I can get a cookie that is slighter more tender. I love a crunchy cookie as much as anyone else, but this one is crunchy to the extreme and I would prefer to be able to eat a cookie with the filling intact.
I really love these cookies. They're definitely different from a real Nutter Butter, but just as good. Plus, they're a lot of fun -- just looking at one makes me smile.
Recipe: "Nutter Butters" from Bravetart by Stella Parks, recipe available here from epicurious.com.
Previous Post: "The Better Nutter Butter: The Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookie," January 13, 2014.
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