I’ve wanted to write this post for over a year. There were so many times I wanted to tell you what I was doing and how I was up to my eyeballs in 17 jars of peanut butter almost every day.
But I decided that rather than drag out the suspense for a year, and long before my book was even going to be in stores or that you could buy it, that I’d just surprise you when the timing was better.
Well, surprise! My first cookbook, Peanut Butter Comfort: Recipes for Breakfasts, Brownies, Cakes, Cookies, Candies, and Frozen Treats Featuring America’s Favorite Spread
The book features more than 100 recipes and they all use peanut butter. Yes, there’s peanut butter in every single recipe. I cannot even tell you how much peanut butter I went through in 2012. I was literally buying it by the gallon while recipe testing.
In some recipes, peanut butter is bold and in your face like in old-fashioned peanut butter cookies.
And in other recipes, it’s subtle, hardly noticeable, and binds ingredients or lends moisture to biscuit dough.
It’s primarily a dessert cookbook, with a focus on comfort food desserts that stick to your ribs like Marshmallow Fluffternutter Butterscotch Bars.
Or a Caramelized Peanut Butter and Banana Upside-Down Cake that will make your soul sing.
There is one chapter devoted to savory and salty-and-sweet combinations like Cheesy Peanut Butter Crackers, a homemade riff on Peanut Butter-Filled-and-Flavored Cheez-Its.
There’s Fresh Spring Rolls with Thai Peanut Sauce. You can’t have a peanut butter book without peanut sauce.
There are a handful of recipes that have appeared on my blog because I have over 50+ recipes on my site that use peanut butter. 35 Peanut Butter Recipes are here, and all of the Peanut Butter Recipes are here. A few recipes I love too much to not include and so in they went.
The irony is that since writing the book and turning in my manuscript last July, I’ve come up with more peanut butter recipes that I wish I could have included but with books, there’s no Edited To Add function like with blogging, and now they’re posted here.
I did all the photography. 100 recipes, 100 photos. Actually, more than 100 photos because at the beginning of chapters and interspersed throughout the book there are accompanying images. You never notice how many photos are in the margins, corners, and sides of pages in a book until you’re the one responsible for making them happen.
I believe there are only two recipes and some frosting recipes that don’t have accompanying photos. It was important to me to really show you what the food looks like when it’s done. It’s a peeve of mine in cookbooks when every fifth or seventh recipe gets a photo and the rest don’t, and I made sure to avoid that.
They say that writing a book is like being pregnant and birthing a baby. Well, I’ve done both and there are striking parallels. In the beginning, I was so full of anticipation, excitement, and so eager. Ready to get on with it, and for the fun to begin. Midway through, the novelty wears off and that initial energy rush has dwindled and it’s hard work to stay on track and keep the other aspects of life humming along, too. Toward the end, you’re dead tired, fatigued, and wonder how you will go on. And in the last week or two before the due date, life is a blur, awake all hours of the day and night, just trying to finish and stay strong.
And then, after all the edits, revisions, changes, going up and back time and time again, you hold your baby in your arms, or in my case see a PDF of my baby on my computer screen, and it’s suddenly all worth it. And I want to do it again because it was the most rewarding and fulling experience.
And I am. But that’s a whole other post.
Here is the front and back cover with jacket flaps. I didn’t design the cover but had input. The photography is mine, but my publisher has a design team who created it.
Although there are similarities to writing a food blog, it’s definitely different. The recipe development, cooking the food, trialing it, photographing it, writing about it, learning about the publishing process, and experiencing it all has been the hardest work, but the best work. And I’m grateful to the Skyhorse team for their support.
And I’m eternally grateful for my husband’s support. I could not have done it without him. Both from helping me parent our daughter to eating his weight in peanut butter in 2012. I could not have blogged 365 days last year and clocked in 370 posts, written a book, taken care of our house and child without him being Daddy Dearest. That said, it’s amazing how little sleep I got last year and I’m about to do it again.
You’d think I would have gotten sick of peanut butter in this whole process but I haven’t. My recipe yesterday included it and I adore it just as much as ever.
I hope you love peanut butter and Peanut Butter Comfort as much as I do.
Thank you for your support!
So excited for you! And the timing is perfect as my birthday’s at the end of April so I already know one thing that’s going on my wishlist. :) We are a peanut butter-lovin’ household so I am thrilled that you devoted a book to that delicious, versatile, healthy (in moderation) spread.
There are a few ‘healthy’ recipes in the book; relative term there but granola bars and muffins and things like that that aren’t too over the top :)
congrats averie, so excited for you :)
Oh my goodness – so exciting, Averie!!! That is perfect for you! Can’t wait to read it! :)
Congrats Averie!
WOW!!! Congratulations :) I have only found your blog recently but I LOVE it and I love your style of writing and cooking…from the heart! What a great accomplishment and I can’t wait to get the book!
Thanks for being a newer reader & for your support!
Congratulations! That’s really exciting. Everything looks delicious!
Oh my goodness! So happy for you! My family adores your recipes and you have inspired us to get a Vitamix :) Will be preordering the book today. Congratulations!
Thanks for preordering and about getting a Vita – wow, how awesome. I bet you LOVE it! That first year or so with that Beast :) is such a fun time. It’s amazing what you can make, isn’t it!
Wow congrats!! So happy for you, but why would you post a picture of something like Caramelized Peanut Butter and Banana Upside-Down Cake for me to see this early in the morning? Just torture! Need in my mouth, now.
LOL :)
Congrats! That’s awesome. Those PB cookies look like the PERFECT consistency and on that alone, I’m off to pre-order!
And if I do say so myself, they are THE perfect old-fashioned cookie w/ perfect consistency. And thanks for the preorder! :)
Oh Averie! I am so excited for you and proud of you too. This is just so awesome! Just one of many cookbooks to come I’m sure!!!
Something like that :)
And thank you for your support and friendship, always! xoxo
so excited. and i already preordered it! CONGRATS on your cookbook! i’m very excited to get mine!
Thanks for your support and the lighting fast preorder!!
CONGRATS AVERIE! How exciting. I’m so happy for you. Bring on the PB!
Congratulations Averie! The book looks so beautiful and I’m thrilled for you! I can’t wait to get this book!
Lady, you are a machine! CONGRATULATIONS! I was already astounded by your daily posting with such high-quality photographs and seeing how nice a blogger you are, appearing lots in the comments of other sites – you’re a real community gal! AND YOU’VE BEEN SNEAKILY WORKING ON A BOOK?! Have you slept in a year?! This is insane. Y’know what’s more insane? The idea of caramelised banana peanut butter upside down cake.
Is May 1st the date it comes out everywhere or just US? I need it here in the UK!
It comes out everywhere on May 1 but I am unsure of European distribution so ordering from Amazon is likely your best bet.
And thanks for noticing I am a team player and community gal. There is no other way I could be. Supporting each other is the only way for me!
I am so excited for you!!! Yaaaaay! I know your book will be lovely and detailed and amazing AND I want you to know that you are absolutely, without a doubt, one of my favorites. To turn out so many detailed recipes and well-written posts PLUS write a book PLUS juggle your home & family, NOT TO MENTION the time you take out to visit other blogs, read and comment- You, Miss, are pretty great!! Seriously- there are so many amazing food blogs with so many awesome things to read and see, but you, You totally hold your own with reader interaction and I appreciate it so so so much. I will SO happily buy your book and add it to my collection. Thanks for always being so helpful & happy & encouraging!!
Heather thanks for your super kind words and support and I try to be a team player and spread the love because I just couldn’t be any other way! It’s about community and to do it all in a vacuum without interacting with others just would feel so…odd! Thanks for being fabulous & all your sweet comments & sentiment!
Wow! Congratulations, Averie! I am so very proud of you, girlfriend! To wake up this morning and visit your blog to read the phenomenal good news is just ah-mazing…because, it was just yesterday (Valentine’s Day, while making dessert for The Big Lug), that I thought, “This awesome baker, Averie, HAS to write a cookbook!” I totally relate to your drive and passion with baking and our palates are so similar. Cannot wait to dive into your cookbook in May! (I definitely will be pre-ordering.) As for your next cookbook, I bet you’re already “on it”. And, dollars to gluten free donuts, I bet the subject is CHOCOLATE (or Nutella)! If I’m wrong here (and it’s TJ’s Cookie Butter), well then chocolate can be the subject of your third cookbook. LOL! Honestly, I don’t know how you’ve had the time to write a cookbook and keep up the pace you have set for yourself with your blog. I am “to the moon and back” proud of you and grinning from ear to ear. So (so!) happy to have just met you online in time to share in your immense joy. PB Comfort is going to be a global SMASH HIT! BRAVO! xoxo
Thanks for being so happy & enthusiastic, Stacy! The pace has been insane the past year – but it’s been so rewarding that it makes it all worth it!