Provoca la Revolución

There’s a strange situation afoot in Santiago:  peanuts are abundant and beloved, but peanut butter is not.  A small jar (around 15oz) of smooth PB usually costs between three and four dollars.  And I am sorry to report:  crunchy is not to be found.  All the Americans I know here complain about this condition, but none of us can explain it.  (If you have any insight, email me!)

So, being the poor wanderers that we are, my sister, her boyfriend and I did without for nearly a month.  Almost a month without peanut butter.  Excepting those who hate peanut butter or have peanut allergies, please take a moment to imagine a month without peanut butter.  (To the allergy sufferers, I have my own autoimmune disorder, so I feel your pain.  If you miss peanut butter, just skip this post and read this instead.)

During this long, peanut-butterless month, we talked a lot about how we missed PB&J sandwiches, PB cookies, PB and bananas, PB and apples, PB and chocolate – I may have left something out, but you can be sure we discussed it.  Then when we finally became desperate enough to spend $4 on a jar of peanut butter, we found, tucked away on a shelf in a grocery store near my sister’s apartment, this:

a Safeway Brand jar o’ creamy peanut butter (or pasta de maní or mantequilla de maní, depending on who you’re speaking Castillano with).  There are other peanut butters available – I even found a Chinese brand in a Chinese food store – but the unique thing about this one is that the price was mislabeled.  While the shelf tag read 1.700 (1,700 Chilean Pesos), the product rang up as 1.000!  $2 peanut butter! Needless to say, we returned to the store several times over the next few days and bought them out of all of their largely unwanted imported peanut butter.  (We weren’t afraid the locals would buy them, but we were afraid other Americans might catch on.)

Unfortunately, they recently rearranged the store and we’ve not seen our trusty Safeway jars since, but we received a tip from a close friend saying we can find them elsewhere. So here’s hoping, especially since I used half a jar to make a small batch of delicious, warm & creamy, flour-free peanut butter cookies tonight:

The recipe is as follows and came directly from this page.

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

One cup creamy peanut butter
One cup white sugar
One teaspoon baking powder
One egg

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Cream the peanut butter and sugar in a bowl. (As much as I love my KitchenAid, I have found that this is a hand-stirring job). Beat in the baking powder. Add the egg. Mix until it is all well combined.

The dough will be sticky, so be prepared to get your hands messy. Roll some dough into a ball. (How big? That depends on you. I have found, however, that the smaller these cookies are, the better they hold together. Eat two instead of one!) Roll the ball into white sugar. Line a baking sheet, covered in parchment paper, with sugary balls of dough.

Bake in the oven for about ten minutes. You will know the cookies are done when they feel coherent, but still a little soft. Take the tray out of the oven and let the cookies rest for at least five minutes. Afterwards, carefully transfer them to a cooling rack. After ten minutes or so, they will have hardened and be glistening with sugar.

Eat them.

Makes ten to twelve cookies.

As all the ovens (los hornos) we’ve encountered here are gas ovens without temperature settings or readings, I used the toaster-oven-of-limited-capacity in my sister’s apartment, baking 6 cookies at a time.

We had plans to share the cookies with my sister’s housemates, but didn’t really get around to it. They probably wouldn’t have liked them anyway… right?  (Previously, I witnessed a girl take then request a piece of our (relatively) expensive dark chocolate – which we customarily dip in peanut butter, of course – and fervently refuse to try it à notre mode.  When in Rome, stealing chocolate, do as.  Everyone knows this.)  Nevertheless, I have a plan to further corrupt foreign lands with our contaminating Western Ways.

They’re somewhat fond of Nutella crepes here, and although Nutella runs $4-5 per jar, we may have to take a hit on the rest of our meals for a bit and experiment with Peanut Butter/Nutella Cookies.  I’d start with a large Nutella-to-peanut-butter ratio to hook them, then gradually phase out the Nutella and increase the relative amount of peanut butter.  Yes, the good old bait and switch. We’ll have Chileans craving peanut butter (and stores competitvely stocking and pricing it) in no time.  Bwahahahahaaa!  Or as they say here: Bwajajajajaaa!

Bring on the revolution.