Cookie Butter

It’s safe to say that butter, as a thing and a concept, changed the world for the better. Whether it’s butter churned by a colonial woman in a log cabin, peanut butter that’s become a daily staple in your diet or that strange almond/cashew/sunflower seed butter that your mom stows in the back of your pantry at home, butters are the best.

And now, there’s a new kind of butter on the market. I first heard about it from a friend; then I kept noticing it pop up on social media. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t, or maybe you’re a recent convert to it like me, but no matter who you are, it’s becoming almost impossible to ignore the latest food trend: cookie butter. While it might be just a food obsession that will be passe when the next cool new food hits the shelves, I have a gut feeling that cookie butter is here to stay.

When my friend first gushed to me over lunch about cookie butter, I pictured some kind of cookie dough that you could eat out of the jar without having to worry about salmonella or E. coli or whatever else made cookie dough supposedly bad for you. What’s not to love about that?

I was told that while many companies were making and selling cookie butter, I absolutely had to get my first taste of it from Trader Joe’s, where cookie butter was apparently pioneered in the U.S. I chose the classic, smooth version instead of the crunchy one, and although I love chocolate, I decided to leave the cocoa version for another time. And yes, I am confident there will be another time.

Cookie butter is made from speculoos cookies, which, yes, are a real thing. Trader Joe’s describes them as a classic Belgian cookie with a slight gingerbread flavor. The butter looks a lot like peanut butter, which could be potentially deceiving to people who don’t usually read labels on jars. However, the consistency is much thicker than peanut butter. And of course, it tastes pretty different, too. 

I first tasted it by itself, and I wasn’t that impressed: It kind of just tasted like nothing followed by an explosion of Christmas and gingerbread houses.

But after I initially wrote it off, I decided to snack on it with some graham crackers, and I began to understand the obsession. This stuff is actually really good.

I decided to take the rest of my jar of heavenly cookie goodness back to school after winter break, knowing that it would probably make me the most popular kid in my hall. A friend in my hall buys cookie dough on a weekly basis from the convenience store and eats it as though her life depends on it. I walked into my room recently and found her on the floor eating Nestlé cookie dough straight from the tube with a spoon.

I knew that I had something in my power that would change her life forever, so I grabbed my half-empty beloved jar of cookie butter and some graham crackers and told her that she absolutely had to try it. I think she was tentative at first — it is pretty difficult to find something more delicious than cookie dough — but she was hooked from her first bite.

“I want to go buy this right now,” she said to me. “Where’s the nearest Trader Joe’s?” 

And pretty soon I had my entire hall Google-mapping the nearest locations and taking overly frequent cookie butter breaks during our desperate search for the nearest cookie butter mecca.

Maybe it’s just a fleeting food trend, and maybe three years from now we’ll all sit back and reminisce about the spreadable cookies that used to be, but one thing is for sure: Cookie butter is downright delightful.