Homemade Cookie Butter

Cookie Butter. Do you know about this stuff? If you don't, you need to familiarize yourself right now. After Sarah and I moved to Pittsburgh last year, we were fortunate enough to find an apartment about 1 mile from a Trader Joe's. At the time, we had no idea how significant this would be to our lives, but we soon ventured in and fell in love. One of TJ's biggest selling products is their Speculoos Cookie Butter, and for good reason. It is incredible, and it basically tastes exactly as it sounds; like liquid cookie gold that you can eat on ANYTHING.

A little while back, Sarah saw this post on A Beautiful Mess with a recipe to make your own cookie butter. Needless to say, we were all over it. Here is our version of some homemade cookie butter!

Here's what you need (Adapted from A Beautiful Mess; makes about one 16 oz. jar):

- 1/2 cup butter

- 1 cup sweetened condensed milk

- 1/2 cup evaporated milk

- 1 package of cookies of your choice (we made 3 different kinds - chocolate chip, vanilla wafers, and Oreos)

- Food processor

- Water

- Jars for storage

Note: If using cookies that have icing in the middle, like Oreos or Nutter Butters, make sure you scrape out the icing before using.

Here's what you do:

- In your food processor, turn your cookies into crumbs. Just put them in, turn it on high and let it happen. 1 pack of chocolate chip cookies, 1 box of vanilla wafers, and 1 pack of Oreos (with the icing scraped out) all produced about one 16 oz. jar each, so there is really no need to measure out your crumbs. 

- In a medium sauce pan melt butter over medium heat.

- Once the butter is melted, stir in sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk.

- In a large bowl, slowly add your milk and butter mixture to your cookie crumbs, combining with a wooden spoon.

- Add only enough of your butter and milk mixture just until all your crumbs are sticking together and you can form a ball in your bowl. Don't add any more after that point (you may not use quite all of your mixture!)

- Your mixture may be a bit chunky or gritty. Don't worry, we'll smooth it out later!

- Set your stiff cookie mixture in the refrigerator to cool. (We let ours cool overnight, but you certainly don't need to cool it for that long.)

- At this point, you can decide how stiff or how smooth you'd like your cookie butter to be. Slowly add in very small amounts of hot water to your cookie butter, stirring until you reach your desired consistency.

- That's it! Now you just have to jar it! Or... just eat it right out of the bowl until it is all gone...

We thought that this would make a really great holiday gift idea in these chalkboard paint recycled jars. You can put your cookie butter on toast, pretzels, crackers, tortillas... you name it! It's delicious in any form, and I mean, come on... who doesn't like cookies? 

Sarah & Nick