Act 10: Powdered Experimentation

My roommate, Steve, asked for Scotcheroos for his birthday, then took it back saying that they were too unhealthy. I had something in mind that might make them healthier (not healthy, just healthier) so I set out to give it a try. 3 pans of scotcheroos later, I might be on to something!

The secret ingredient here is PB2. It’s a powdered peanut butter that you mix with water to achieve peanut butter-like consistency. I’ve heard about it from women at work before… it has a huge following in the Weight Watchers community. I was able to find it in the Health Market section of my Hy-Vee.

The Stats

2 Tbsp of JIF creamy peanut butter: 190 cals / 16 g fat
2 Tbsp of PB2: 53 cals / 2 g fat

The Flavor

The PB2 isn’t as creamy or as peanutty as JIF, but it’s not bad. It might not be my first choice, but I can see why it appeals to people.


As I mentioned above, it took 3 batches to get this recipe right. Despite frustration after the first pan was a failure, I learned that cooking and baking are all about experimentation.

Pan #1

This batch was made to recipe (from the Rice Krispies website of course!). The recipe calls for 1 cup of peanut butter so I diligently mixed 18 tablespoons of PB2 with 9 tablespoons of water to get my full cup.

I brought my corn syrup and sugar mixture to a boil, removed it from the heat and mixed in my peanut butter. And it liquefied. Normally peanut butter will get runnier with heat, but this stuff just disintegrated. I should have stopped there but I wanted to see it through. I mixed in my Rice Krispies, pressed it into a pan, spread my melted chocolate on top and left it to set. Or so I thought. Hours later after putting it in the fridge to harden more it was still runny. I cut a piece out to try and the cereal wouldn’t hold together. I looked at the pan later and the “peanut sauce” had actually seeped and covered the bottom of the pan where that piece I cut out used to be. Not good.

Now, I was disappointed but I also thought I knew what went wrong. You mix the powder with water to make the peanut butter. Adding it to more liquid (the corn syrup/sugar mixture) is just too much. It’s like you added triple the water you wanted and just made peanut sauce. Solution? No water! Let the corn syrup act as the liquid.

Later Steve suggested just using less water. A valid idea I hadn’t come up with on my own. What can I say? I deal in extremes. He also convinced me to give it another shot. Even though I thought I had a solution, I was hesitant to buy more ingredients and try it. I don’t like not succeeding. I don’t even like saying ‘failing’! But experimentation is how you come up with great new things, so the next day I gave it another go with 2 half-batches.

Pans #2 and #3 – The Half Batches

I made two half batches so as to waste fewer ingredients. One used no water and one used half the water. I used 12 tbsps of PB2 for each half batch because I didn’t think the peanut sauce in the first pan was peanutty enough. I could have gotten away with less.

For Pan #2 (the “No Water” pan) I just dumped the peanut powder right into the hot corn syrup mixture. It became creamy and smelled like good old peanut butter! When we went to add the Rice Krispies however, we couldn’t add them all. A half batch calls for 3 cups but without the water there just wasn’t enough liquid. 2.5 cups went in but it was too much and made the bars a little hard, though they set up very nicely and tasted pretty good.

Pan #3 was the “Half Water” pan. 12 tbsps of PB2 would normally be mixed with 6 tbsps of water so I used three. It mixed nicely with the corn syrup and I was able to mix in all 3 cups of cereal. Pretty amazing that 3 tbsps of water got me another cup of cereal! That little amount of water didn’t set up well though. The cereal stayed together much better than Pan #1, but it was still way too sticky and not quite set, especially on the bottom.

The Winner

Pan #2! Not using water made the end result more peanut butter-y and let it harden the way they are supposed to. My batch wasn’t perfect, but it was close and I think with another test I could perfect it. For best results I’d recommend only using about 4.5 cups of cereal instead of 6 for a normal sized batch, or adding an extra tbsp or so of corn syrup (or even 1 tbsp of water) to the mix to allow enough liquid for all the cereal. Just don’t overdo the liquid… remember, 3 tbsps of water is too much! Either way, the end result should be pretty good.


And as for the nutrition stats… using the PB2 powdered peanut butter as I did in the winning batch saves you about 1,000 calories and 106 grams of fat per pan. If you cut 15 decent sized bars out of a 9x13 pan, you’d save about 70 calories and 7 grams of fat per bar. That’s healthier!