Those of you who are from cultures where the idea of eating peanut butter and jelly or jam together–and you know who you are–what do you think about peanut butter cookies?
I just made some delicious ones tonight, and it occurred to that people who think of peanut butter as a savory item not to be eaten with something sweet might also find the idea of a PB cookie odd.
So, what say you?
I’m not from such a culture but I’ve never liked PB&J. Which drives my wife nuts as I love peanut butter and like jam/jelly now and then. It’s just the combination on bread that I can’t stand.
I’ve just never been a jelly or jam fan. I’ll eat peanut butter sandwiches as well as peanut butter cookies.
There are people who won’t eat a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich? INFIDELS!!!
Okay, okay. Let me take back the “Infidels” comment and change it to the much more positive: “Great! More for MEEEE!!”
I came in to post a similarly astonished note that there could possibly be people who deliberately (and on purpose) do not eat peanut butter and jelly sammiches.
Why would anyone do that to themselves?
This. I met a person today who ate peanut butter sandwiches but never PB & J. What is this wrongness against humanity? I blame the media or was it the medium or was it Medea. Whatever I blame them.
I’m not sure which came first – the chicken or the egg.
Aus traditionally did not eat PB cookies, PB&J, or sweet savories at all. But it’s gradually converting over, starting with stuff like sweetened PB, BBQ sauce, sweet BBQ sauce pizza, sweetened soups.
PB&J (Goobers) and PB flavoured* cookies are not a big thing here, but both are for sale if you look. NOBODY gets PB&J in their lunch, but that’s because peanut products are banned in most schools.
Snickers (peanut and chocolate candy bars) are standard here, so I don’t think anyone would be surprised at the concept of a PB cookie, but importantly, when someone tried to pretend that it was a traditional AUS flavour ("Aussie ANZAC biscuits: contains peanuts) the product was a commercial failure.
*I say PB flavoured because I have yet to see a genuine PB cookie. I think that is because “vegetable fats” are cheaper than peanuts.
It’s not that I find peanut butters to be a savoury-only thing, it’s that I find *that particular combo *to be disgusting. I love some bars that have pb as an ingredient, for instance. But PB+choc is a very different combo from PB+fruit jelly.
Especially if it’s Concord grape jelly. That shit is foul enough on its own.
I prefer B&PB&J sandwiches. Just add some salted butter, and it’s perfection.
Peanuts are savory. Peanut butter with Jam is an abomination. Peanut butter cookies - you’ve wasted your time.
Even by Aussie standards I’m pretty rabid in my anti-peanuts-and-sugar fundamentalism. Snickers bars are Just Wrong - I don’t care how many of my compatriots eat them happily. My family all eat peanut butter and honey sandwiches (freaks, I tell you! But at least they’re not so lost to all decency as to put jam in there) but I’m not letting them cross my lips. A housemate once proudly brought back some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups from the US - I couldn’t choke down more than a nibble.
However even I in my anti-gluco-leguminous frenzy, will admit that peanut butter cookies are not too bad. As long as I resolutely bar from my consciousness the knowledge that they do in fact contain peanuts, I can even enjoy them.
So, just don’t tell me what’s in them, and hand 'em over. Promise I won’t go all anaphylactic on you…
This is absolutely true, but I can’t resist throwing in a little titbit I discovered earlier this week … schools which ban peanut products are actually acting against current best practice:
Dubious relevance to the current topic, I know, but I just found it interesting … the received wisdom appears to be changing.
I eat peanut butter and I eat jam but never together on a sandwich. This was discussed at work last week and every Aussie in the conversation felt the same way. Many like peanut butter and honey. One of my favorite sandwiches is mashed banana, peanut butter, lime zest and chili jam.
I’m in the same boat, if the OP will pardon an other response from someone who lives in PB&J-friendly territory. For some reason I like almond butter and jam just fine. But not peanut butter.
Sweet, baked peanut butter goods are fine. Just not with fruit.
I’ve never liked peanut butter, so I’m the wrong person to ask. Even the smell of it repulses me.
But peanut butter on its own, and as an ingredient in other foods, seems popular around these parts.
But if you can’t tell peanut butter is in them, they don’t sound like like good PB cookies to me. 
So, is the savory-sweet dislike specific to groundnuts/peanuts or does it also apply to tree nuts? I ask because tree nuts are often found in sweet applications like cakes, chocolates, Nutella, etc., and mixing nuts and fruits seems to be fairly popular around the world. While peanuts are not true nuts, they fall into the same general category as tree nuts for me taste-wise. Similar texture, similar sort of flavor, similar amount of “savoriness.”
These anti-sweet-peanut threads crop up often. It makes me wonder where all of the anti-sweet-red-bean threads are. Hasn’t that Asian flavor made sufficient inroads into the Western conscious? Especially in a place like Australia?
Heck, you can even find bean pies around here which, as that article states, is associated with African-American Muslim culture. They are quite lovely.
Well, I can’t blame my parents; both ate PB&J. And its hard for me to nail down just what I have against it. The best I can say is that the combination of textures is the biggest turn-off. But I would rather do a half-dozen shots of Franks RedHot on an empty stomach than eat half of a PB&J sandwich.