Barney Butter Peanut Butter Spread Smooth

Rating: 6/10

• 🥜 Category: Peanut [Spread], Smooth, Sweetened/Plain
• Country of origin: USA

Fresno-based brand I picked up from who knows which trip to California ergo this review may not be the most accurate because it has been sitting around for a while as I slowly work through the Great Pantry Drawdown of 2026 post kitchen makeover (!!!). Oops - the days keep coming and they really won't stop coming.

Quick Internet search suggests this has been discontinued and Barney Butter has gone all in on almond butter, which is an interesting choice - not my journey, cannot relate, but okay.

This is nostalgic but natural-ish: the sweet and salty combination I grew up with, but with a texture closer to what I prefer now. Smooth and gritty without the homogenised spread texture, though it does have palm oil, so it is still definitely a peanut butter spread.

Not spectacular but also not bad, and I'm down to my last little container to spread for my next couple pieces of toast. A fine sweetened peanut butter situation. Would probably have been better if I had eaten it closer to purchase, but surely this makes me ✨ relatable ✨ and you can have fun reading about my pantry excavations 🦖🦴

GUDDIE Pähklivõi

a.k.a. GUDDIE Classic Peanut Butter

Rating: 2/10

• 🥜 Category: Peanut [Spread], Smooth, Plain
• Country of origin: Estonia

Last of the full European jars, but... I saved the worst for last (because never let them know your next move 🫨). 

This is somehow the worst of both worlds, as in it has the hydrogenated-oil, ultra-stabilised texture of something like Bega, but truly none of the taste??? I will tolerate a processed peanut butter when it gives me nostalgia or salt or sweetness or at least some kind of emotional payoff which this does not.

This is tasteless: the peanut flavour is on holiday, probably somewhere with the memories of me purchasing this. Alas, I am here, I am present (I have been working on this), which means I can taste this. This may be my first DNF because I'm not sure how I'm meant to use it 😞

Bonne Maman Pâte à Tartiner Cacahuètes Creamy

a.k.a. Bonne Maman Peanut Spread (Creamy)

Rating: 8/10

• 🥜 Category: Peanut [Spread], Smooth, Sweetened/Dessert
• Country of origin: France

Okay, I've truthfully been umm-ing and ahh-ing about these next couple of reviews because the spreads are not straight peanut butter and salt, but also don't quite fall into the novelty category, which has baffled me a little bit and opened up Pandora's box (am I going to start going back and reviewing Bega? Regular Skippy? Jif??? 🤔😩).

So I have tried my best: please bear with my ever-evolving taxonomy!

Bonne Maman Peanut Spread tastes more like peanut fudge than peanut butter, so that's how I'm going to review it - it's not the jar I would reach for when I want a salty peanut moment, or to use in my cooking. But if the occasion calls for spreading dessert on toast and branding it 'breakfast' (I have free will!) (this is a normal adult decision!) (toast for breakfast is S-tier!!!) then she is invited.

The texture is very spreadable: glossy, smooth, soft, and very much in the Bonne Maman universe. (Do we know that video where a drywaller spreads peanut butter onto bread? I could do that with this, easily, with a butter knife.)

It reads more like the jams and sweet spreads they are known for than a peanut butter. (The chokehold the Bonne Maman caramel spread had on me during one period of my life...) The sweetness is at a lovely level, though it does not pass the Asian "not too sweet" check. It is sweet! We have to be honest with ourselves!

This is the peanut obsessive's answer to the current pistachio spread trope / obsession. A dessert spread, a lil toast toppin' treat, if you will. And yes, I am also a sucker for the gorgeous glass jar and gingham lid combination, because marketing the dream of being a cottage witch absolutely works on me, and one day I will deem myself worthy enough to buy the Bonne Maman advent calendar ❤️

Coop 100% Peanut Butter Smooth

Rating: 7/10

• 🥜 Category: Peanut, Smooth, Plain
• Country of origin: Finland

At this stage I've worked my way through most of my Europe stock and have had a fair few empty jar days recently (⚠️ almost time for another massive haul ⚠️).

This was the first peanut butter I bought: a Finnish number, though I am (now) aware that Coop is a multinational supermarket chain, so you could end up with a different iteration of the same brand product depending on the European country.

This is sound. A well-roasted peanut butter with a smooth, oily texture. Oily oily oily smooth. (If you try to pick up the jar in my house, the label peels off and your fingers get slippery.) Salted, though to my taste the salt level could be upped just a little more.🧂

This is your stock standard, staple, peanut butter, and I love how it is not trying to be anything else: some PBs simply need to be good enough for most occasions and this is one of those jars 🫶

On Snacking Cakes and Evolution

I've been super into making weekly snacking cakes for myself recently (or, let's face it, fortnightly, because I also get through quite a few protein bars). Nutritious enough that I can have a slice for breakfast, delicious enough that it still counts as a little treat for tea.

Here is today's Frankenstein's monster - a loaf of banana bread with chia seeds, lots of peanut butter protein powder, molasses and honey, and covered in a ridiculous but necessary amount of chopped walnut / chopped roasted peanuts. ☺️

As with many things in my life, this blog will be evolving with me (although I also said this in 2024, lol). Peanut butter will still be its focus (still number one on my Myspace top friends list), and the reviews are not stopping! But my life doesn't look like it did when I started this in 2023, so why should the blog stay the same?

Other things that feed my obsession are going to worm their way on here too: recipes using peanuts / peanut butter, interesting observations, recounts of future peanut butter tasting parties - absolutely still on my backlog.

Stay nutty x

Rapunzel Peanut Butter Schoko-Caramel

Rating: 3/10

• 🥜 Category: Peanut, Smooth, Plain
• Country of origin: Germany

Here we are, bravely wading through the emotional archives as I clean out my chaotically organised notes apps (multiple) and trying to decode tasting notes from The European PB haul. That trip feels like a different era: a tiny sun-drenched chapter that feels both recent and very far away. Recent evidence suggests that underneath it all though I remain fundamentally the same person, i.e. someone who would book a trip around a marathon (see screenshot from a few days ago):

As we know, growth is not always linear. To quote a recent French class conversation: je suis montée... je suis descendue (oh là là, je suis tombée!). Sometimes life is just going up and going (falling) down, and maybe all we can hope for is some decent peanut butter review content in between (I'm working on it, OK??????).

This pot is Rapunzel's Peanut Butter Schoko-Caramel, which I bought in Berlin (ja, genau). Unfortunately, this tastes less like actual chocolate and more like fake caramel and Halloween "choc" (a.k.a. chocolate compound) with distinct notes of lipstick. It's like something you would apply to your lips in 2004 from a tiny plastic pot (or if you are me, 2026, as I am also obsessed with anything pumpkin spice flavoured and decided that the Trader Joe's cinnamon roll lip mask would fix something in me).

The texture does not help: it is glossy and thick in a petroleum-jelly sort of way, and somehow keeps its shape like lip balm. I think it's the added oil (I spy palm, sunflower, clarified butter). I wanted a fairytale but I got a nightmare 😱

Intermission: I Am Neither a Glass-Half-Empty Nor Glass-Half-Full Person

Empty jars are my perspective of choice.

Pictured are three different peanut butter jars from three very different chapters. Three nearly identical photos of jars scraped clean with commitment and true devotion.

Through it all, peanut butter remains my joy, my comfort, and my constant companion. I am choosing not to unpack whether this is a metaphor at this time 🫙

Delhaize Crunchy 100% Natural Peanut Butter

Rating: 9/10

• 🥜 Category: Peanut, Crunchy, Plain
• Country of origin: Belgium

Next from the European collection is a Belgian import 🇧🇪

We loved Belgium! We stumbled upon great jazz, discovered many nooks and crannies (IYKYK), went on a really overdue friend catchup / walking tour, ate yummy waffles (I chose bananas and peanut butter as toppings, obviously, do you even know me?) and drank beer so good it briefly made me consider starting an Untappd account so I could weigh in on Trappist ales. I decided to leave that to my more beer-inclined friends C and A, but you bet I sent many photos 🍻

A small country doing a lot. Small but productive: I know this trope. Let her cook!!! 👩‍🍳

I had no expectations for this one, as the jar doesn't seem to be saying much - after all, it's a supermarket home-brand, and the 100% peanut version. But - this is really good! It reminds me of Mayver’s Dark Roasted Peanut Butter, which is huge praise in this house. The roast is dark and properly nutty and the crunchy texture is not aggressive, but full of little sandy/crunchy peanut bits that make it very fun to eat. Dependably excellent and a genuinely delicious everyday peanut butter that I would happily buy again if Belgium were not, disappointingly, quite far away.

She's an icon, she's a legend, and she is the moment. 💗

KoRo Bio Erdnussmus (Organic Peanut Butter) Crunchy

Rating: 6/10

• 🥜 Category: Peanut, Crunchy (???), Plain
• Country of origin: Germany

A very tiny update since the last post: I threw away the HiSmile as it was making the daily care task that is brushing my teeth unbearable, so we're back to normal toothpaste flavours now. I have a weird relationship with the sunk-cost fallacy that bleeds into my compulsion to not waste things even if I don't like them (I would often rather die than not finish a book I end up giving one star), so you can applaud me. Yay!

Another from the European peanut butter haul, and another naked one - I'd not realised so many I grabbed off the shelf were just pure peanuts - in Australia and the US, that sort of thing is usually advertised pretty prominently as "no added sugar" or "no added salt", whereas in Europe it seems more understated (like, yes, obviously, it is just peanuts, please calm down).

Observation aside: KoRo's organic peanut butter is pretty good, if you look past the slight gaslighting that is labelling this as crunchy (hence the ??? in the category). Unlike the name suggests, it has a very smooth texture but with fun little crunchy textural bites studded throughout (you know the texture, like the little bits in a bag of home brand crushed peanuts). The roast is darker than Loeen's or Eric's. Bonus: it's organic and you can read about the product origins and journey on the website.

Solid and dependable, not the quiet luxury of the Loeen's, but I have been reaching for this to dollop on my daily oatmeal (mon porridge au quotidien) 🥣

Hismile Reeses Peanut Butter Cup Toothpaste

Rating: ??? Maybe a 2/10???

• 🥜 Category: Not Nut Butter, Toothpaste

This toothpaste was right near the checkout at Chemist Warehouse and, against my better judgement, I decided I had to know...

If you want to brush your teeth with a sugar-free version of Hershey's chocolate topping with a faint, artificial peanut butter note, then sure. I kind of regret buying into the hype (I tried the banana lolly flavour once and apparently did not learn) but I guess did it so you don't have to. 🙈

I am alternating this with normal mint toothpaste because I can't decide whether I am comfortable going to bed with the taste of bad dessert in my mouth. Technically, I think it works as toothpaste??? But maybe I am just being punk'd??? 🙉

Eric's Peanut Butter 100% Peanuts - Creamy

Rating: 4.5/10

• 🥜 Category: Peanut, Smooth, Plain
• Country of origin: Switzerland

Eric’s Peanut Butter was one of the peanut butters I found while doing my pre-trip research - I saw it on Instagram when decided I needed to try an indie peanut butter Switzerland, and then dragged my partner through multiple grocery stores in multiple Swiss cities looking for it. Romantic travel activities. 🥰

When I finally found it, I stood there umm-ing and ahh-ing because I already had Loeen’s and Bonne Maman to put in the cart, and I usually review the no-sugar version where possible, but the original had honey and sea salt, and they also had a Swiss chocolate version. (I am not usually a chocolate person, but I am a Swiss chocolate person.) This was a difficult and important moment.

I went with the naked version: just peanuts. I really wanted to like this, as I love the story and mission (and the social media posts - just look how cute the handwritten posts are! - I took a screenshot from the official Instagram account) but unfortunately, this is where I think naked peanut butter goes wrong. Instead of tasting naturally sweet and toasty, it tastes a little burnt and a bit sad and lacking in flavour.

Maybe the honey and sea salt version makes more sense, so I should try to recreate the experience at home? I haven’t really wanted to reach for this jar given I am spoilt for options. 😔

Loeen Peanut Butter

Rating: 9/10

• 🥜 Category: Peanut, Smooth, Plain
• Country of origin: Switzerland

We begin the European peanut butter reviews with the jar that that got dented in transit and leaked slightly in my luggage. Tragic, but also fitting, because this was the jar that cost CHF15 (a reminder: roughly AUD 30) so clearly it had to make its presence known.

Loeen’s nut butters are made by a family-run Swiss business sourcing their nuts from a farm in Iran. This peanut butter is completely unseasoned: just pure roasted peanuts. No salt, no sugar. Usually I approach "naked" peanut butter with caution because I do like a little salt to wake things up, but this might be the best unseasoned peanut butter I've tried to date (!!!). The natural sweetness is beautiful, the roast is gentle. I guess you could say the whole experience tastes expensive in a minimalist way, like sparse prose meant to be savoured.

So far, it has been extremely welcome spooned over my wintery baked oats with a small sprinkle of (Trader Joe's) pumpkin pie spice. Is part of this the placebo effect of eating rare, gourmet, expensive, international peanut butter? Maybe, but I can't say it's not working...

Incoming: Souvenirs From a Sweet/Savoury Trip to Europe

I have returned from Europe! I am fully back in my original timezone and recovered from jetlag and carrying what I believe to be a very reasonable haul! Some people bring home magnets, postcards, cheesy shot glasses (my partner), or tasteful local ceramics... I brought home jars of PB. One of them was AUD30 because the conversion from Swiss Francs... let's don’t talk about it. My bank account may never recover.

Across various international grocery store visits - one of my favourite travel activities and, frankly, a key pillar of cultural research - I managed to acquire a little lineup of peanut butters from Finland, Estonia, Switerland, Belgium, and Germany. (The trip has also made me more insufferable in other ways, because I have picked up French lessons again and the second thing my class learned about me (after my name) was that J'aime beacoup le beurre de cacahuète.)

Reviews are coming as soon as I come back from the combined effects of marathon recovery, building up a laundry backlog, and the emotional weight that is owning these rare acquisitions and writing about them. Please respect this important work.