Product Extraordinaire: A better butter

A few weeks ago, Skip reviewed PB & Co's "The Heat is On," a peanut butter better used for Thai chicken and other savory dishes rather than PB&J. Around this same time, I ordered some of PB Loco's Sumatra Cinnamon and Raisin peanut butter. PB Loco - a largely online business, unless you live somewhere like Scottsdale, AZ - offers flavors such as CoCo Banana (I'll take a dozen! and a spoon!) and Asian Curry Spice (For Savory Dish Use Only). The Sumatra Cinnamon seemed like a safe choice, and ended up being as delicious as it was versatile. The texture was creamy, the raisins were plump, and the cinnamon was delightfully aromatic. It was great on sandwiches, with apples, out of the jar - I enjoyed eating it too much to try to make cookies or muffins, but I can only imagine that it would improve such things.

Because I was on such a Cinnamon-Raisin peanut butter high after my PB Loco experience (their motto is peanutbutterlicious! who doesn't love that?), I picked up some of Peanut Butter & Co.'s Cinnamon Raisin Swirl at the grocery store. I mean, even if it didn't live up to PB Loco's high standards, it couldn't actually be bad, right?

I haven't had other flavors of PB & Co. butter, so I can't say if this is true for all of its flavors, but this is a GRAINY peanut butter. I don't know if this is because of their use of evaporated cane juice as opposed to refined sugar, but I have never had peanut butter with this much grain going on. (And this is from a girl who regularly eats almond butter, the grainiest of the grainy butters.) Plus the raisins were hard and the cinnamon was much milder than I would have liked.

That said, I still ate it...and I found myself craving the PB & Co. butter at odd hours of the day. I did get used to the grainyness, and I could see how some would find it more natural-seeming and therefore more appealing. But I like my butters smooth & flavorful, so I'm sticking with PB Loco.

Thanks to Bizzy Grl over at Flickr for the beautiful pb shot.