I'm making a Peanut Butter Blondie recipe, and I'm trying to make it healthier for a Health Class my son is in. The recipe calls for 2 cups of peanut butter chips and I want to use natural peanut butter instead. How would I convert 2 cups of chips to an amount of peanut butter.
Here is the recipe for those interested. http://www.squirrelbakes.com/2011/01/peanut-butter-blondies.html?showComment=1295643747439
You cannot convert it, because they are two different ingredients.
Peanut butter chips are pieces which stay whole when baked. They don't melt, just sit there so you can bite on them after the cookie is baked.
Peanut butter is a creamy substance, and if you try to put it in a blondie, it will not form a chunk, it will become part of the dough, giving it a completely different texture and maybe even hindering its baking well. Even if it bakes properly, you will get a totally different result, with dough that tastes uniformly of peanuts, without a contrast taste to bite on.
You could try putting in whole peanuts (shelled, without the papery skin, but unsalted and toasted), in which case you can use the same amount in cups. It will still be somewhat different, because they will be harder to bite on than the chips, and it can make the blondies drier as a whole.
well, since the chips are supposed to stay firm and not spread out, you would need them to be firmer (at least when mixing).
You might try making, not quite sure if it has another name, but peanut butter filling - I recall mixing with powdered sugar, and sometimes a bit of cornstarch or butter, or once in a while brown sugar (though that would melt easier, it tasted good) for a stiff pale peanut butter putty that can act as layers in other sweets, or to approximate the peanut butter filling in chocolates, or other kinds of peanut butter fudge or candy (buckeyes, or whatever). It is just to dry the peanut paste out a bit. Since you're also going to be baking these in blondies, I suppose adding a bit of flour could also work - you just wouldn't want the taste if the flour was uncooked. It can be chilled if still a bit soft, chopped into chunks, and added to your recipe, and any remainder should be kept refrigerated and used quickly.
Or, you could go the other way and try something with more fats - coconut oil or cocoa butter, because they're solid at room temperature. The pb chips are supposed to be similar to chocolate chips (fine starchy cocoa powder emulsified in cocoa butter), so you would use a solid fat to firm them up at room temperature, but they would melt, rather then dry up, at higher temps. I think I've seen some recipes for pb chips on this same principle, for those who want to make their own because of dietary restrictions. Again, you would likely need to chill until firm before chopping into chunks, and refrigerate the remainder.
(ah, found some recipes along the same lines).
To substitute with two cups of pb chips, you would want two cups of your finished product - though how much peanut butter you start with will depend on how much of which other ingredients you're adding, so I couldn't say - but likely a cup and a half of peanut butter will get above two cups worth of chips/filling, considering how much it will need to be thickened to be made solid.
Peanut butter chips can be melted... think peanut butter fudge. Use the equivalent weight in a recipe that calls for a melted chip. If it is meant to be firm, add a bit of powdered sugar, just as you might in a candy recipe.
I substituted peanut butter for peanut butter chips making a pie. It called for 10 ounces melted chips and I usd 10 ounces of peanut butter. It came out perfect.
