I’ve wanted to write this post for over a year. There were so many times I wanted to tell you what I was doing and how I was up to my eyeballs in 17 jars of peanut butter almost every day.
But I decided that rather than drag out the suspense for a year, and long before my book was even going to be in stores or that you could buy it, that I’d just surprise you when the timing was better.
Well, surprise! My first cookbook, Peanut Butter Comfort: Recipes for Breakfasts, Brownies, Cakes, Cookies, Candies, and Frozen Treats Featuring America’s Favorite Spread
The book features more than 100 recipes and they all use peanut butter. Yes, there’s peanut butter in every single recipe. I cannot even tell you how much peanut butter I went through in 2012. I was literally buying it by the gallon while recipe testing.
In some recipes, peanut butter is bold and in your face like in old-fashioned peanut butter cookies.
And in other recipes, it’s subtle, hardly noticeable, and binds ingredients or lends moisture to biscuit dough.
It’s primarily a dessert cookbook, with a focus on comfort food desserts that stick to your ribs like Marshmallow Fluffternutter Butterscotch Bars.
Or a Caramelized Peanut Butter and Banana Upside-Down Cake that will make your soul sing.
There is one chapter devoted to savory and salty-and-sweet combinations like Cheesy Peanut Butter Crackers, a homemade riff on Peanut Butter-Filled-and-Flavored Cheez-Its.
There’s Fresh Spring Rolls with Thai Peanut Sauce. You can’t have a peanut butter book without peanut sauce.
There are a handful of recipes that have appeared on my blog because I have over 50+ recipes on my site that use peanut butter. 35 Peanut Butter Recipes are here, and all of the Peanut Butter Recipes are here. A few recipes I love too much to not include and so in they went.
The irony is that since writing the book and turning in my manuscript last July, I’ve come up with more peanut butter recipes that I wish I could have included but with books, there’s no Edited To Add function like with blogging, and now they’re posted here.
I did all the photography. 100 recipes, 100 photos. Actually, more than 100 photos because at the beginning of chapters and interspersed throughout the book there are accompanying images. You never notice how many photos are in the margins, corners, and sides of pages in a book until you’re the one responsible for making them happen.
I believe there are only two recipes and some frosting recipes that don’t have accompanying photos. It was important to me to really show you what the food looks like when it’s done. It’s a peeve of mine in cookbooks when every fifth or seventh recipe gets a photo and the rest don’t, and I made sure to avoid that.
They say that writing a book is like being pregnant and birthing a baby. Well, I’ve done both and there are striking parallels. In the beginning, I was so full of anticipation, excitement, and so eager. Ready to get on with it, and for the fun to begin. Midway through, the novelty wears off and that initial energy rush has dwindled and it’s hard work to stay on track and keep the other aspects of life humming along, too. Toward the end, you’re dead tired, fatigued, and wonder how you will go on. And in the last week or two before the due date, life is a blur, awake all hours of the day and night, just trying to finish and stay strong.
And then, after all the edits, revisions, changes, going up and back time and time again, you hold your baby in your arms, or in my case see a PDF of my baby on my computer screen, and it’s suddenly all worth it. And I want to do it again because it was the most rewarding and fulling experience.
And I am. But that’s a whole other post.
Here is the front and back cover with jacket flaps. I didn’t design the cover but had input. The photography is mine, but my publisher has a design team who created it.
Although there are similarities to writing a food blog, it’s definitely different. The recipe development, cooking the food, trialing it, photographing it, writing about it, learning about the publishing process, and experiencing it all has been the hardest work, but the best work. And I’m grateful to the Skyhorse team for their support.
And I’m eternally grateful for my husband’s support. I could not have done it without him. Both from helping me parent our daughter to eating his weight in peanut butter in 2012. I could not have blogged 365 days last year and clocked in 370 posts, written a book, taken care of our house and child without him being Daddy Dearest. That said, it’s amazing how little sleep I got last year and I’m about to do it again.
You’d think I would have gotten sick of peanut butter in this whole process but I haven’t. My recipe yesterday included it and I adore it just as much as ever.
I hope you love peanut butter and Peanut Butter Comfort as much as I do.
Thank you for your support!
Amazing! Going on my wishlist right away!
So freaking excited for you Averie!!! Lots of love xoxo
Oh, Averie! Congratulations to you, my friend!!! I am so incredibly happy for you and for what I KNOW is going to be an outstanding cookbook. I know this so surely that I already have pre-ordered my own copy!! I always knew you should be writing cookbooks and if I have it my way, “The Ultimate Bar” Cookbook is on the way! ;-) Whatever your next theme is, you can count on the Sparrow clan supporting you through it all.
How awesome that you chose peanut butter! And not a surprise, either! ;-) I know how much you love it. Your photography, your sweet and friendly, not to mention easy and fun-loving style will make your book an instant success. Again, congrats!! You are amazing! :-D
Thanks for the preorder and for your undying support, Michele! You have always said that about bar cookies. I would love to write that book one day…I just dont think it’s novel enough to convince publishers to publish. But trust me, I want to write that book!
Congratulations!!! So so so exciting! Dang you’re good at keeping a secret : ) I have no patience when I have exciting news that I want to share haha.
No sense jumping the gun til people could do $$ something about it :)
Averiiiiiiiieeeee! This is amazing! Congratulations! You deserve it!
I was wondering per our old emails if you sensed I was writing it or not, but I was :)
Congratulations!. That’s awesome. Those pictures look gorgeous as always. I love pb!
Congratulations! The recipes look great. I love peanut butter
Congratulations!! What a neat concept for a cookbook! I bet you were close to getting stock in peanut butter after all of that ;) How fun!
Congrats! This is so awesome! I am so excited for this to arrive!
Congratulations! I can’t wait to get a copy. And I have to tell you, it was really weird reading this post because I was just thinking about your blog yesterday and wondering if you were ever going to write a cookbook. Now that you’ve gotten peanutbutter out of the way, I think you should do a comprehensive dessert book, you know, in all your spare time…Keep the great recipes coming!
Holy S&*T!! THAT IS FREAKIN’ AWESOME!!!! SO Happy for you, Averie!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!!! I’m literally jumping for joy! That is incredible! I wish you all the success in the world! You deserve it!
I love your excitement and thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!! xoxo
Hi Averie! I’m SO PROUD OF YOU! Seriously, I am so proud and excited for you. I think I’m more excited about you getting a cookbook deal than any other blogger, because I feel like I know you personally and know how much work and effort you put into your blog and all your recipes while staying on top of keeping in touch with your readers. You’re a workhorse, but we can all see that you truly love what you do, that’s why you’re so successful at it.
I think this is such an original idea, I mean there are not to many peanut butter cookbooks out there. You know I’m totally going to buy one. I also love that you posted pictures for each recipe. I need photos and that is my one pet peeve as well when I browse through a cookbook and there are pictures for some of the recipes and not pictures of the rest. I often wonder what’s wrong with that recipe, why isn’t there a photo? I’m also not a fan of recipes that are so doctored up that they don’t even look like the real thing. Of course, we might throw a bit of green on a dish to liven it up for the photograph, but it’s real food and should look like what the reader’s finished product is going to look like.
I really love the way the cookbook looks; it’s so colorful and happy just like you! Congrats again girl and you so deserve this. Can’t wait to hold one of these puppies in person!
xoxo, Jackie
You’ve said it many, many times to me over the year(s) about how you thought I should be writing a book, well, I was :) I just wanted to surprise everyone and now you know. And yes, no way to do this without being a workhorse of the highest order, but it’s all worth it. And yes to having photos for most/all of the recipes in cookbooks. It’s expensive to print them for the publishers and for the photographers to be hired to take them, but it’s such a fundamental and uncompromising issue for me as well!
Congratulations Averie!!! How amazing. If anyone was going to write the book on peanut butter, it had to be you! Your peanut butter recipes make an appearance at least once a week in our house! You have never steered us wrong! I can not wait to receive your book and start baking! Off to Amazon :)
Thanks for your support, recipe making, and preordering :) Was just thinking about you yesterday – you popped into my head b/c I made peanut sauce for dinner :)
In my mind, peanut butter is its own food group, which makes this cookbook my new Bible. Congratulations, and thank you so much for sharing all of your amazing recipes! Can’t wait to dive into everything PB on May 1st!!
Thanks, Jen for your support. I am with you on it’s own food group!
WOW, Averie, CONGRATS!! I’m so, so happy for you and can’t wait to see what you have come up with. I’m sure it will be totally and completely fantastic!!
I thought maybe you knew. Right around the height of Milkbar Monday’s I was in the THICK of this. And those 16 hour Milkbar posts just weren’t able to continue :)
Congratulations, Averie! Looks like a terrific book and I can’t wait to get my hands on it (though peanut butter cheese crackers! Yes!). I’m so impressed that you’ve managed to consistently blog nearly every day while also writing this book. You deserve a vacation!
Every day, yes. Daily posting while writing a book was crazy but that’s okay :)