Photo: Rachel Fairbank
As our colleagues over at The Takeout point out, there’s a weird peanut butter sandwich in all of us. For my mother, that meant packing a peanut butter and pickle sandwich for lunch every single day of her twenty-year career as a public- school teacher. And as she often pointed out, she never had to worry about someone stealing her lunch.
For others, it might be a peanut butter and bacon sandwich, a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich, a peanut butter and butter sandwich, a peanut butter and chips sandwich, or even a peanut butter and sriracha sandwich.
Peanut butter can be paired with any number of flavor combinations—sweet, savory, tangy, or spicy...it all works for somebody. Whatever you like best, that’s the peanut butter sandwich for you. So in the spirit of fall, may we humbly suggest trying a peanut butter and pumpkin sandwich?
I recently stumbled across this recipe during one of those random Internet searches that are known for getting a little weird. The original recipe I found called for mixing equal parts of peanut butter and canned pumpkin. When I tried it out, this particular combination was most definitely not my kind of sandwich, as it tasted exactly like what you would expect from mixing cooked squash with peanut butter.
However, what I did find was that if you add in a little bit of honey and a dash of pumpkin pie spice, this sandwich actually gets good. Really good. The honey mellows out the pumpkin and the spice adds just a little bit of flavor, all of which mingle well with the taste of peanut butter. The resulting mixture is thick and creamy, with just the right amount of pumpkin.
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Personally, I recommend adding in some banana slices, but that’s my own preference, as the pumpkin-peanut butter filling is good enough on its own. If you do add bananas, you might prefer reducing the amount of honey by half, to adjust for the sweetness of the banana.
Peanut butter and pumpkin sandwiches
Ingredients
2 tablespoons natural creamy peanut butter2 tablespoons canned pumpkin1 tablespoon honey1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spicesliced banana (optional) four slices of bread (preferably toasted)Instructions
Mix equal parts of natural creamy peanut butter with pumpkin puree, then add in honey and pumpkin pie spice. This will be enough for two sandwiches. Spread mixture on two pieces of bread, add in banana slices if you want, then top with remaining bread slices.
