Giles and Posner Peanut Butter Maker November 2009
Peanut butter machine grinds to a halt
The Giles and Posner Peanut Butter Maker promises to make either smooth or crunchy peanut butter with nothing more than a handful of peanuts. Read on for our first look review of this nutty kitchen gadget.
Dry and crunchy: Giles & Posner peanut butter
Giles and Posner has launched a peanut butter maker which, it says, can create delicious chunky or smooth nut butters - so we gave it a try.
You can use any shelled and skinless nuts in the peanut butter maker, so it’s good for making nut butters you can’t buy in the shops, such as cashew or macadamia butter.
We wanted to make a nut butter with a roasted taste that didn’t contain too much salt, but the health-food shops and supermarkets we tried didn’t sell roasted unsalted nuts. We decided to use 250g of unroasted peanuts, which we thought was about right as the instructions did not specify a maximum weight to use. The engine overheated after making a quarter of a jar and cut out once, then cut out and overheated again after half a jar.
The butter we made was crunchy but fairly dry, and it didn’t look or taste any better than shop-bought peanut butter.
Using the peanut butter maker
The gadget is simple to set up and use, and small enough to store away easily in a small kitchen, but the instructions don't include basics such as the quantity of nuts to use in one go (a ‘batch’ is too vague).
Including two 15-minute breaks, it took 45 minutes to make half a jar (170g) of nut butter.
As some of the mixture got stuck when using whole peanuts, and the instructions said any nuts could be used, we decided to try the machine out using 90g of chopped mixed nuts instead (peanuts (70%), almonds (15%), walnuts (15%)). The chopped nuts still stuck as we were making it, so we added in two teaspoons of peanut oil towards the end, although the instructions didn't call for it.
We think the machine sounded like a motorbike and won’t be popular with your neighbours. It isn’t dishwasher-proof and is a little fiddly to clean (we had to use a skewer to poke nut residue out of the grinding mechanism).
It’s available now from Prezzybox.com costing £29.95 (£33.90 including delivery).
Making your own peanut butter is not about saving money. A 500g bag of peanuts cost us £1.99, and made a 340g jar. A 340g jar of Sun Pat costs £2.09 from Ocado. A 340g jar of Whole Earth peanut butter costs £2.19 from Ocado and Tesco.
Pros: Makes acceptable nut butter
Cons: Very loud, overheats or cuts out too quickly. The ingredients cost about the same as buying peanut butter.
