Koeze Company Cream-Nut Natural Smooth Peanut Butter

Rating: 5/10

• 🥜 Category: Peanut, Smooth, Plain
• Country of origin: USA
• Serving suggestion: Mixed with vanilla/pandan or some other flavouring (perhaps good quality cocoa powder) and spread on toast or drizzled on fruit

Surprisingly nice roast level - unexpected from the colour alone. Texture is wonderfully spreadable but thick and gritty. I believe, from some quick Internet research, this is what Cream-Nut is known for and divides the people of the town.

Cream-Nut has a slight toasty, ashy taste that to me is not unpleasant but that doesn’t linger too long. To me, this is plain (like Bazzini, it is advertised as an old-fashioned style of peanut butter, an "oldie but goodie") - but in a way where I see it as a blank canvas.

Really tastes like Smith’s original (salted) potato chips at the end and coats your mouth in a similar way. I do like this! - but I'm not sure that I like it enough on its own to give it more than a 5.

Bazzini Old Fashioned Roasted Peanut Butter

Rating: 8/10

• 🥜 Category: Peanut, Smooth/Crunchy, Plain
• Country of origin: USA
• Serving suggestion: Delicious on toasted sourdough with raspberry compote for an adult PB&J; pictured here with some vanilla, sliced banana and a dusting of cinnamon for extra oomph

Oh, I like this one a lot!

A very classic (old fashioned as it says on the jar) dependable peanut butter and it doesn’t claim to  do more than that. Beautifully balanced flavour and on-point salt level. Nutty nutty nutty, rich, and naturally sweet with a pleasant texture and aftertaste.

Timeless, tasty, and pantry-staple worthy.

BKLYN Larder Peanut Butter

Rating: 4.5/10

• 🥜 Category: Peanut, Crunchy, Plain
• Country of origin: USA
• Serving suggestion: A savoury sauce for your weeknight stir-fry - I made this baked crispy peanut tofu recently, or in baking where peanut butter isn't the main flavour (picture is a chocolate chunk banana bread I made with oats, good quality dark chocolate, super duper ripe bananas and peanut butter to tie it all together)
  

I expected a lot from this one because BKLYN Larder seems the kind of place I would absolutely love to live around the corner from. I simply have a soft spot for specialty food stores, and their housemade cookies, especially the peanut butter toffee flavour they sell (in which they put their own peanut butter) sound crazy good.

Tasting notes off the spoon: woody, earthy, and sways bitter. The texture is dry and too firm for my liking with some crunch. My main thought is that for a salted peanut butter it's very thirsty for more salt! Overall this jar a bit underwhelming, but I can still find ways to dress it up, and I see how it would play well as second fiddle to good toffee (maybe I need to make the cookies for myself) or some other sweet, already-flavoured, mix-ins, or maybe as an component in a homemade mixed nut butter (I’m thinking some creamy cashews and either coconut or dark brown sugar for a smoky sweetness and improved texture).