Confession time: I had to try this one twice to get it right. In the peanut butter wars in my house, I'm firmly on the side of Extra Crunchy Jif. My wife, on the other hand, is a proponent of Smucker's Natural Creamy. Under the assumption that using crunchy peanut butter to make hot cocoa would be a mistake, I used her natural, oily, flavorless peanut butter instead of my own trusted source. It was weird. Delicious, but the original review of this one was going to be: "It’s good, but the texture was somewhat off-putting."
That's not how I wanted to remember peanut butter hot cocoa. So I bought a jar of creamy Jif and tried it again. Much better this time.
Ingredients (roughly measured)
1 3/4 C milk (I usually do 2 C for all of these, but I ran out...)
1 1/2 T Hershey's cocoa
Almost 2 T sugar
1 1/2 t Vanilla (definitely more than it called for; I just like vanilla)
A heaping T of peanut butter (creamy, not natural)
- First things first: I followed the recipes almost exactly when I started this project. Now, I'm just kind of using them as guidelines. For instance, I always add more vanilla than I'm supposed to because vanilla makes everything delicious. So try the proportions above, but by no means should you stick to them.
- Start by mixing the milk, cocoa, sugar, and vanilla in your saucepan as you heat it. It starts a little thick, but that's the cocoa. The more you whisk it, the more it'll return to a milky texture. Once it's mixed and you're close to a simmer, drop a dollop of peanut butter in it. Again, you'll need to mix it well. The peanut butter will remain solid for a couple minutes, but stirring it as it heats up will cause it to separate and you won't have a large glob of it anymore.
- Let it simmer for 5 or 6 minutes on medium heat. I don't know how long I actually left it on for, but every once in a while I took it off the heat and held my hand over it to see if it was warm. You know, the ol' "does it feel warm enough" test... It's not super reliable, but this isn't rocket science: keep stirring and leave it on as long as you'd like. Don't boil it and you'll be fine. (For the record, I burned my tongue immediately, so in the future, I'm maybe going to take it off a little before I think it's ready.)
- I'm usually not crazy about garnishing (I even go back and forth on adding whipped cream) but the recipe I used suggested putting salted peanuts on top (I think to be cute). Figuring why not, I put a couple peanuts on top of the whipped cream. Sure enough, it looked like I could have posted it on Pinterest (is that a good thing or a bad thing?), but practically speaking, it wasn't great. A: if I wanted crunch to it, I would have just used my damned Extra Crunchy Jif and saved a trip to the store. B: soggy peanuts aren't the greatest texture in the world and they're not super flavorful. Thumbs down to garnishing. You might feel differently. I'm not offended.
- Enjoy!
