Three peanut butter cups, 13 g each, from Bett'r — the vegan, organic answer to a confectionery classic. A soft peanut cream centre inside a dark chocolate shell, with a pinch of salt in the recipe.
What is in them. Roasted peanuts (32%), coconut sugar, cacao mass, cacao butter, coconut cream, sunflower lecithin and salt. The chocolate is a minimum 52% cocoa, and it contains no milk at all — the creaminess in the shell comes from coconut cream rather than milk powder, which is what makes these vegan without tasting austere.
Why the salt is doing more work than you think. A peanut butter cup without salt is flat and cloying. Sodium suppresses bitterness on the tongue more strongly than it adds saltiness, so a small amount makes 52% cocoa read as rounder and sweeter while simultaneously sharpening the savoury, roasted note of the peanut. It is the single ingredient that makes the whole thing work, and it is listed last.
Peanuts are legumes, not nuts. They grow underground and belong with peas and beans. This matters practically: peanut allergy is separate from tree-nut allergy, common, and can be severe. Say so if you are handing these round.
Compared with the mass-market version. The famous American peanut butter cup is built on sugar, milk and hydrogenated vegetable oil, with peanuts well down the list. Here peanuts are a third of the product by weight, the sweetener is coconut sugar, and there is no dairy. It is less sweet and considerably more peanut-forward. Whether that is an improvement depends on what you were nostalgic for.
A pack of three — designed to be shared, or eaten over three days by someone with more discipline than most.
Allergens: peanuts. May contain traces of other nuts and sesame.
Available at Só Verde, an organic concept store in Foz, Porto.
treatfuls
treatfuls
Sophie m
