At my soon-to-be-ex-company, my coworkers and I take a snack break every day at 3 pm. Going up four flights of stairs and crossing to another building to visit the "Korner Store" is a good way to waste at least 20 minutes.
I almost always just get my sugar (and usually caffeine) free soda. Often it's Diet Sprite or Caffeine Free Diet Coke but sometimes I feel sleepy enough to grab Diet Dr Pepper or Diet Coke with Lemon. $1.20. Sometimes I pay with 20 pennies just to annoy the cashier.
My coworker, Scott, sometimes gets a Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream bar but John always gets a pack of Nutter Butters with his soda. In fact, he gets annoyed if all they have are those "damn Nutter Butter Bites which are just crap."
In the interest of science, today I purchased a pack for 60 cents. Let's see what we find:
Trippy patterned, red foil outside. The pack is emblazoned with "Nutter Butter" in BIG letters while the red Nabisco® logo (now owned by Kraft) sits in the upper left with (U) and D in the lower left. The upper right helpfully tells me there's "4 Cookies" which weigh 1.9 oz (54g), according to the lower right. Just so we know what we're getting into, under the "Nutter Butter" it says "PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH COOKIES". That's a relief. I was afraid these might be Durian Fruit wafers.
The front facing side restates exactly what I'm getting while the back yields decidedly more interesting information.
Nutrition Facts Serv. Size: 1 Package (54g), Amount Per Serving:
Calories 260, Fat Cal. 100, Total Fat 11g (17%DV), Sat. Fat 2g (10%DV),
Cholest. 5mg (2% DV), Sodium 210mg (9%DV), Total Carb. 36g
(12%DV), Fiber 2g (6%DV), Sugars 15g, Protein 5g, Vitamin A (0%DV),
Vitamin C (0%DV), Calcium (2%DV), Iron (8%DV). Percent Daily Values (DV)
are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.
Oh, and a UPC symbol which looks vaguely like
"|| ||| || | || || ||||| || || ||| | || ||||" (aka 044000 037451) only moreso.
Venturing to the bottom gives us the dreaded ingredient listing. Sorry about the caps, folks, but I must report the truth!
INGREDIENTS: ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE {VITAMIN
B1}, RIBOFLAVIN {VITAMIN B2}, FOLIC ACID), SUGAR, PEANUT BUTTER (ROASTED PEANUTS, HYDROGENATED
RAPESEED, COTTONSEED AND SOYBEAN OILS, SALT), ROLLED OATS, VEGETABLE SHORTENING (PARTIALLY HY-
DROGENATED SOYBEAN OIL), WHEY, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, LEAVENING (BAKING SODA, CALCIUM
PHOSPHATE), EGGS, SALT, CORNSTARCH, VANILLIN - AN ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, SOY LECITHIN (EMULSIFIER).
To the right we have the Nabisco small logo and the strategically placed information EAST HANOVER, NJ 07936 MADE IN U.S.A. LOCAL BAKERIES... COAST TO COAST
© NABISCO, INC.
And lastly, WHEN WRITING TO US, PLEASE ENCLOSE THE PACKAGE OVERWRAP WITH BAKERY CODE, OR CALL 1-800-NABISCO (622-4726), WEEKDAYS.
There's a hidden, secret message on the back as well: 2341AE3091. We can only assume this is its Social Security Number.
If you wish to sally forth into the pack of Nutter Butters, turn to page 8.
If you wish to give them to your coworker, turn to page 23.
Removing the foil, we find four nutter butters stacked 2x2 shielded by a piece of white cardboard. They look kind of like
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Enlarged to Show Texture
Unfortunately, 2 of them are broken. :( Notice the peanut shell shape to indicate the lack of durian flavor. Everything is a beige-ish color. The general anatomy appears to be two cookie halves with a peanut butter center. Separating them, we find the inside of the cookies to have a delightful hatch pattern, most likely formed by the conveyor belt they were baked on. The filling is non-sticky, probably due to the shortening and has a fairly high viscosity. When reshaped into a little ball and munched, it's creamy with a strong peanut taste. Yum!
The cookies are crumbly and taste of both peanuts and vanilla. I assume this is a result of putting peanut butter and vanillin - an artificial flavor - in it. Or perhaps it's the SOY! Not bad overall.
On the Accipiter Cookie Rating System, the filling gets a Chewy:2/3 and the cookie gets a Crunchy:1/2.
This is all moot though because the true value is when the filling and cookie are combined and form, like Voltron, a tasty cookie!
As you chew the cookie, it quickly loses its hard form and combines into a slightly thinner peanut butter paste, an explosion of peanut buttery goodness. "Oooh! It tastes so good in my mouth!"
I decided to see what official information I could dig up on this delicious cookie: NOTHING. According to the Nabisco website, Nutter Butters are the #9 selling cookie in the US. 34 million pounds (over 1 billion cookies) are produced each year, and that's all. Wanting more information, I called 1-800-NABISCO. All they could tell me is:
- Nutter Butters were introduced in 1969.
- They're certified Kosher Dairy.
- If I was calling about Oreos, they could tell me a lot more - "If you could see the information I have on Oreos, you'd be shocked."
Nutter Butters: The choice of an oppressed people.
The last thing I found was a recipe to create your own nutter butters (smuggled by freedom fighters I imagine). Of course, it clearly isn't authentic as it lacks Vanillin - An Artificial Flavor and SOY lecithin.
Title: NABISCO NUTTER BUTTER
Categories: Cookies, Desserts, Cakes
Yield: 1 servings
COOKIES
1/2 c Vegetable shortening
2/3 c Granulated sugar
1 Egg
1/2 ts Salt
3 tb Peanut butter
1/2 c Old-fashioned Quaker oats
1 c All-purpose flour
FILLING
1/2 c Peanut butter
3/4 c Powdered sugar
1 tb Fine graham cracker crumbs
1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the shortening and
sugar with an electric mixer.
3. Add the egg, salt, and peanut butter and beat until
well blended.
4. Put the oats in a blender and blend on medium speed
until they are almost as finely ground as flour.
5. Add the oats and flour to the mixture and blend well.
6. Pinch out small portions of dough and roll into 1-inch
balls in the palm of your hand. Press these flat on
ungreased cookie sheets so that they form 2-inch
circles. If you're a stickler for a cookie that looks
just like the original, you can form the dough into
flat peanut shapes.
7. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, or until light brown around
the edges.
8. While the cookies bake, combine the filling ingredients
in a small bowl.
9. When the cookies are cool, use a butter knife to
spread a thin layer of filling on the flat side of a
cookie and press another on top. Repeat.
Makes 2 dozen cookies.
No thanks to http://www.nabisco.com. The cookie recipe came from http://www.recipesource.com
Yum.