So my inspiration for this Sunday Sweet comes from one of my favorite comics, Sheldon by Dave Kellett (Click on the comic below and you can go to the site and become a big fan too!). I feel as if Arthur, the duck character, is my foodie soul mate and when I read this comic I instantly had an urge to get into the kitchen and make my version of his MEGA BUTTER!!! So here is the comic of inspiration and my version of ARTHUR’s MEGA BUTTER. Get ready to be blown away by sheer awesomeness!!
And as an added bonus I’ve even thrown in an almost vegan Mega Butter Oatmeal cookie of MEGA proportions as well. This is a modified recipe from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s book Vegan with a Vengeance. I definitely recommend you check it out even if you aren’t a vegan.
So Mega, So Awesome!
MEGA BUTTER, MEGA AWESOME!
Watch out Jelly you are about to be dominated!
INGREDIENTS
1/3 cup peanuts, roasted and unsalted (or salted if you like a saltier peanut butter)
1/3 cup almonds
1/3 cup cashews
1 1/2 tsp honey
1 1/2 tsp brown sugar
3/4 tsp cinnamon
canola oil/peanut oil, enough to get correct peanut butter consistency
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
Spread nuts in a cake pan. Roast nuts in the oven for about 10-12 minutes. You’ll start smelling the roasty nut goodness as the are getting good and yummy. Take them out of the oven and let them cool for about 10 minutes.
Pour cooled nuts into a food processor or blender. Before adding the flavorings give the nuts a good blending. Give the pulsed nuts a stir and add the honey, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Turn on the blender and gradually add the oil. Do this very slowly, it takes a bit for the oil to really incorporate so be patient!! Drizzle the oil!! This takes about 5 minutes.
Forget the bread and jelly, just get a spoon and dig in! Enjoy!
MEGA BUTTER AND OATMEAL COOKIES
COOKIE FACE!!
INGREDIENTS:
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups quick oats
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup canola oil
3/4 cup homemade mega butter, (or you can go out and purchase a peanut butter of choice but that just isn’t as fun, now is it??)
1 1/2 cup brown sugar*
1/2 cup granulated sugar*
1/2 cup milk ( this is where you can make it vegan and use soy milk)
2 teaspoon vanilla
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Lightly grease your cookie sheet.
Mix all your dry ingredients (flour, oats, baking powder, and salt) in a medium bowl. In your mixing bowl mix all the wet and sugar ingredients (brown sugar, granulated sugar, milk, oil, peanut butter, and vanilla). Mix them until well combined, it will look creamy. Mix in the dry ingredients until well incorporated. It will be a thick dough and safely edible!!! (For those of you who have scruples with eating cookie dough made with egg vegan recipes are great because they have no eggs! So dig in and eat a cookie or two worth of dough before you bake 😉 or if you have more self control than others you could wait for the finished product )
To make cookies pack a 1/3 cup measuring cup full of cookies dough (I gave my measuring cup a lil’ spritz of cooking spray first so the dough would easily pop out). Roll the dough into a ball and then flatten on your cookie sheet to about 1/2 in thickness. You can use a large cup or pie pan with a greased bottom to flatten them, but I found even with the grease I had problems with it sticking to the bottom of the cup/pan. Place about 1 in apart so they don’t bake into each other. You will probably get about 5 cookies per a sheet.
Bake 12-15 minutes; you want the edges browned and the centered a bit puffed. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for about 10 minutes so they will harden.
You will get about 12 cookies. If you are in the sharing mood with a large crowd you can make the cookies the standard size and bake for 8-10 minutes.
Don’t forget to leave lots of room for dessert! Enjoy!
*I like to thank my foodie crush Alton Brown for this sugar tip…when you have a recipe that calls for both brown sugar and granulated sugar you can exchange for more of one sugar. Why would you do this??? Well a sugar with more brown sugar tends to be a softer cookies, while a cookie with more granulated sugar is crisper! Just make sure you have the same amount of sugar in the end. For example, if a recipe calls for 1 cup brown sugar and 1 cup granulated sugar ( 2 cups sugar total), you could make a softer cookie by using 1 1/2 cups brown sugar and only a 1/2 cup of granulated sugar (as you can see still only 2 cups sugar total). Give it a try with your chocolate chips cookies next time!
Fatty Bear's Delights 
Oh my that sounds delicious. I imagine digging in with a big ole spoon is only possible if you’re a growing teenager that doesn’t have any concept of calories. If I had this around the house I’d be afraid of uncontrolled growth around the midsection.
Great tip on the sugar in the cookies. I had no idea that I could vary the sugar like that and it would affect the softness of the cookie.
Is there some sort of substitution rule for replacing sugar with honey?
Great question about honey! I personally have never used honey as a substitution, more as a flavoring agent, but I have seen it already written into recipes (maple syrup is another sugar substitute I have seen as well). So with a bit of research here is what I have found about substituting with honey.
1) WHY WOULD YOU DO IT? Option 1: For the health conscious, honey has more vitamins and minerals than granulated sugar, BUT according to the Mayo Clinic it has slightly more carbs and calories than a teaspoon of sugar, which can be a concern for the diabetics out there. Option 2: You have honey but you don’t have sugar. Personally, not having honey would more likely be a problem for me so you will be happy to know the substitution can go both ways, but that has it’s own set of instructions. OPTION 3: It makes things a bit moister, apparently one site says it’s a good substitute if you like to mail cookies as care packages so your cookies aren’t all dried out upon arrival.
2) THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT HONEY: Here are some important facts about honey that will effect your baking. 1) Honey is sweeter than granulated sugar 2) Honey is an acid, which can mess up the chemistry of baking 3) Obviously, honey is a liquid, this can effect the consistency of your baked good and 4) Honey makes things brown faster. Okay, so now that we are friends with honey let’s see what we can do to get along with it in our baking.
3) Using my super sleuth research skills here are some links to how to substitute with honey.
http://www.ehow.com/how_2110342_substitute-honey-sugar-recipe.html
http://www.ochef.com/91.htm (check out this site if you want to know how to do honey–>sugar)
http://homecooking.about.com/od/specificfood/a/honeytips.htm
To summarize the links:
HONEY IS SWEET! if you are substituting one cup or less you can do it in equal proportions. 1/2 cups sugar–> 1/2 cup honey. If you are substituting for more than one cup use 2/3-3/4 cup of honey for every one cup of sugar. Some sites even recommend using slightly less honey even when the substitution is under a cup. This is where the honey being sweeter than sugar comes in. You don’t want people making that weird super sugar face when eating your baked goods.
HONEY IS AN ACID! To combat the acidity of honey add 1/2 teaspoon baking soda (as you may know from chemistry ACID+BASE=NEUTRAL) If you already have milk or some other dairy in your recipe you should need to worry about adding the baking soda since these products act as bases as well.
HONEY IS A LIQUID! Simple solution, just use less liquid elsewhere. The general consensus is about 1/4 cup less liquid elsewhere for every 1 cup of honey you use. This is just one of those things you have to experiment with.
HONEY MAKES THINGS BROWN FAST! To help control the browning factor reduce your recipe temperature by 25 degrees Fahrenheit. This means you have to be more time conscious, just because it’s brown doesn’t mean it’s done on the inside so make sure you test it with your cakes tester, toothpick, finger or whatever utensil you like to poke your baked goods with to check doneness.
Now if you are new to this whole substituting thing I would take the one site’s recommendation and only substitute some of your sugar until you get a feel for how honey alters things.
Hope this helps you out in your baking substitutions!
Wow thanks for the great information. I always assumed that since honey was liquid you’d have to adjust the other liquids. I didn’t realize honey was significantly sweeter to justify altering the recipe though, and I didn’t even think about the chemistry behind it.
I love Sheldon! How bad is nut or seed butters, calorie & fat wise?
So not really having a background in nutrition I had to do a little research to answer your question. I found a great table on Vegetarian Journal site written by a person who is a registered dietitian, so its information should be fairly trustworthy. Here’s the link, scroll down the to bottom for the table… http://www.vrg.org/journal/vj2001nov/2001novnuts.htm. As you will find out nuts and seeds are high in fat, but it is predominately unsaturated fats, which are the heart health fats and help lower your cholesterol. We like these! YAY! Furthermore, nuts and seeds have no cholesterol. So not only do they lower it, but they are also not adding their own! Lastly, nuts are packed with nutrients. So from the research you have made me do I personally loves nuts more 🙂 The great thing about making your own nut/seed butter is that you get to control what goes into it. So go wild making your own nut butters! I’d love to hear about any recipes of your own you come up with/find.
Thank you for doing the research for me! I appreciate the effort. So far, I’ve been lazy and purchased the seed/nut butters, but I can see where making it myself could be better.
Unsatured fat or not, it definitely comes with very, very many calories. But who cares when it’s MEGA BUTERRRRR!
This recipe sounds like all sorts of awesome, though the nut-butter itself isn’t vegan either. Honey is made by bees, and therefore an animal product. Substituting molasses, maple syrup, or agave nectar would likely yield a just as pleasing result.
Thanks for making Arthur’s dream a reality!
That is true. Thanks for the suggestions of how to make it Vegan 🙂
I has made your mega butter and found it awesome! thanks for sharing this with everyone!
Funny and yummy post! I agree: who cares when it’s MEGA GOOD for you!
Maryse
Looks awesome! Can’t wait to try!
First-rate blog. You have earned a new fan. Please maintain the fabulous posts and I look forward to more of your intriguing updates.
I know I should resist my natural impulses and just go along with the joke but I can’t: this comics makes no sense. Saying that mega butter has 1400 calories makes no sense. You can only talk about how many calories a food has per unit (of weight or volume). And a mixture of any combination of foods will have no more calories per unit weight than the worst element of the combination. So mega butter would be less mega than the most mega of the original butters.
Thanks, that is a very good contribution. I found it via MSN and immediately incorporated into my feedreader. I am pleased to soon be back here to read again! Best greets
[…] Well, Sheldonista and fellow foodie Ruth B. was inspired, and put together her own Mega Butter recipe! Check it out over here! […]