This cookie butter thing has gone too far. To summarize, people like the taste of cookies, but rather than eating cookies, they mash them up into paste and spread smaller amounts of it on bread, waffles, crackers, or fruits and vegetables. I have no problem with that.
This practice is tolerable, even though it ignores the fact that most spreads provide complementary amino acids (when eaten with the grains in bread or crackers, that means complete protein, largely lost when you’re spreading carbs on carbs). But now, there is a flood of recipes where people are making other foods using cookie butter as a featured ingredient. And sometimes, they don’t stop there.
Image Source: thesurznickcommonroom.com
It’s time for an autopsy of these recipes, because your basic ingredients have been tortured and recycled to death by the time you eat them.
Let’s recap where your food has been.
Step 1: Bake cookies. Typical primary ingredients: flour, sugar, butter/shortening, water/milk, possibly eggs and rising agents, salt.
Step 2: Smash the cookies into paste. Using a food processor or blender, plus some liquid or fat, the cookies are rendered into “cookie butter”. Some put this in a jar and spread it on stuff, but why stop there when you can cook it and mash it a few more times?
Image source: The Simpsons, Fox Broadcasting.
Step 3: Make a recipe using cookie butter as a major ingredient. We’ll use Cookie Butter Cheesecake as an example. The Cookie Butter Cheesecake recipe below (link in the reference section) requires cookie butter to be folded into the cream cheese/sugar batter. In other words, the cookies become the main flavor in the cheesecake.
Image source: Eli’s Cookie Butter Cheesecake, elischeesecake.com
In fact, if you visit the food retailer Trader Joe’s in the United States, you will notice that cookie butter has taken over approximately 51% of its product line: Cookie Butter Ice Cream, Pumpkin Cookie Butter Spread, Cookie Butter Cheesecake Bites, and much more.
Step 4: Then, of course, you can go that extra step and try a recycled cheesecake recipe. Cheesecake Soup, Cheesecake Salad and Cheesecake-Stuffed Cookies come to mind. To be fair, some of these recipes use cream cheese and then call it cheesecake, but if you Google any of the above foods, you will find some where leftover cheesecake is chopped up and used.
Wait a minute, Cheesecake Stuffed Cookies? And if we made those with Cookie Butter Cheesecake, then they would be Cookie Butter Cheesecake-Stuffed Cookies? Haven’t we come full circle and more? Bake it, mash it, recook it, mash it again, cook it again, and cook it once more?
Here, I’ll save you the trouble. Try a box of Cookie Butter Stuffed Cookies from Trader Joe’s. If you don’t live near one, then you’ll have to make your own. That’s right, cookies stuffed with cookies. They’re really good, right up there with bacon-stuffed bacon and potato-stuffed potatoes.
Image source: cookingwithtraderjoes.com
Rather than cookie-stuffing cookies, wouldn’t it be easier to make cookies with primary ingredients in the recipe like flour, water, sugar, spices, and throw in whatever else you like (cream cheese, chocolate, etc.)?
Tastes just like cookies. But maybe I’m missing something. Maybe they need to be mashed again.
Sources:
Top image: Shrek, DreamWorks Pictures.
Cookie Butter Cheesecake (one of many such recipes online): http://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/recipes/a45318/cookie-butter-cheesecake/
Trader Joe’s Newsletter Article on Cookie Butter: http://www.traderjoes.com/fearless-flyer/article/1647
Cookie Butter Stuffed Cookies: http://www.theimpulsivebuy.com/wordpress/2015/02/11/review-trader-joes-cookie-butter-sandwich-cookies/
Cheesecake Stuffed Cookies: http://cafedelites.com/2016/08/01/cheesecake-stuffed-chocolate-chip-skillet-cookie/
Cookie Butter Cheesecake for Mail Order: http://www.elicheesecake.com/