Over the last year or two I’ve gotten increasingly into homemade things. Bread, granola bars, yogurt, tomato sauce… they’ve all become things worth the time to make myself. This time, though, things got a bit silly and I decided to make homemade fluffernutters. If you’re not familiar, that’s a peanut butter and fluff sandwich. They’re so delicious that there was a battle several years ago about whether or not to ban them in schools in Massachusetts!

SAVE THE CHILDREN!!!

So, we need to make peanut butter, fluff, and bread. Not too bad.

Definitely reasonable proportions!

For the bread, I just made a fresh batch of the Super Bread I made when I was just starting this blog out. It really is a great sandwich bread, and it’s got lots of protein so you feel full for a decently long time.

Particularly nice looking loaves this week, I thought.

Next up, the peanut butter is super easy.

Ingredients:

• 16 oz roasted & salted peanuts
• 3 teaspoons honey
• 1 tablespoon peanut oil

Put the peanuts in a food processor and process for a minute. I (still) only have a tiny food processor, so I did it in two batches.

At this point the chunks will be small, but still definitely there.

Add the honey and oil (or half of them, if you’re doing it in batches), and process another minute and a half to two minutes, until smooth. (Or until your poor tiny food processor starts smoking and you figure that that’s smooth enough.)

…And that’s it. You’ve made peanut butter. You can taste it and add salt or more honey if you like, but I was happy with this as-is. Sort of strange, I normally HATE the “natural” peanut butters, I don’t even think they taste like peanuts. I don’t know what they do to those ones, but I like this much better!

Onwards to the fluff! This is one recipe where I kind of wished I had a KitchenAid, but… oh well, you get by.

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoons water
• 1 1/4 cups light corn syrup
• 3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
• 4 large egg whites (room temp egg whites beat up much, much, much better than cold ones – remember that always)
• Pinch salt
• Pinch cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine the water, corn syrup, and 3/4 cup sugar in a sauce pan. The original recipe said “small” saucepan, but I found that the mixture bubbled pretty wildly on its way up to temp, so don’t go TOO tiny.

Heat on high heat to 246 degrees, keeping an eye on it with a candy thermometer. I don’t know what the deal is with my stove, but I could not get this hot enough until I fashioned a little tinfoil lid to keep some of the heat in. The sugar melted and the mixture went clear at some point, and I thought that must be progress, but it was still 30 degrees too cool at that point.

Super pro?

While the sugar mixture is heating, whip the egg whites, salt, and cream of tartar until creamy and foamy, about two minutes. If you do have a stand mixer, use the whisk attachment.

With the mixer still on, sprinkle in the remaining tablespoon of sugar and continue beating until the whites hold very soft peaks, about two minutes.

Once the sugar mixture has reached the right temperature, drizzle it in to the eggs with the mixer on slow speed. Be really careful – this stuff gets stringy and behaves in weird ways, and will burn like crazy. I’m pretty sure my mom still has scars from making candy apples when I was a kid, and this will mess you up just as bad if you get it on yourself.

Once you’ve poured all the sugar mixture in, turn the mixer up to high and whisk until thick, fluffy, and nearly completely cooled, about 7 minutes.

It lumps in odd ways. I'm glad this mixer is from a power tool company, as I feel like a wimpy model would have had a rough time with this.

Bring the mixer back to low and mix in the vanilla.

This felt much messier than it now looks.

Now take a big spoon and eat TONS of this. If you’re feeling too healthy, maybe just scoop it up with some grapes? I’ve been known to eat enough fluff and grapes that I make myself ill.

The cleanup is actually not that bad as long as your sink gets super hot water.

Once your parts are all made, all that’s left is to put it together!

And, voila, you’ve successfully killed half a day making a sandwich. A very good sandwich.

Assuming you’re a heathen, the last step is to retreat upstairs and scarf with all haste.

Perfect!

To prevent the peanut butter from separating, you should store it in the fridge. (If you want to put it in the cabinet, you’ll probably have to stir the oil back in when you want some.) I haven’t seen advice on storing the fluff, but I put it in the fridge because I felt weird about putting egg things in the cabinet, and that hasn’t done anything bad to the texture yet.

I’m not sure that I now need to make fluff every time I want to eat some, but it does open up some interesting possibilities as far as replacing the vanilla with other flavorings. Strawberry fluff? Already exists in some stores. Orange fluff? Mint fluff? I’d try them…

Once again, submitted to yeastspotting.

Creamy Peanut Butter

• 16 oz roasted & salted peanuts
• 3 teaspoons honey
• 1 tablespoon peanut oil

Grind peanuts in food processor for one minute. Add honey and oil and process another minute and a half to two minutes, until smooth.

Fluff

From Food Network, via Culinary Concoctions by Peabody.

• 6 tablespoons water
• 1 1/4 cups light corn syrup
• 3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
• 4 large egg whites
• Pinch salt
• Pinch cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine the water, corn syrup, and 3/4 cup sugar in a sauce pan. Heat on high heat to 246 degrees, monitoring with a candy thermometer.

While the sugar mixture is heating, whip the egg whites, salt, and cream of tartar until creamy and foamy, about two minutes. With the mixer still on, sprinkle in the remaining tablespoon of sugar and continue beating until the whites hold very soft peaks, about two minutes.

Once the sugar mixture has reached 246 degrees, drizzle it into the eggs with the mixer on slow speed. Turn the mixer up to high and whisk until thick, fluffy, and nearly completely cooled, about 7 minutes. Bring the mixer back to low and mix in the vanilla.

Fluffernutter Sandwich

• 2 slices of bread
• fluff
• peanut butter

Spread peanut butter on one slice of bread, and fluff on the other. Put them together, then put them in your mouth.