Pic's Peanut & Chocolate Butter

Rating: 8/10

• 🥜 Category: Peanut, Crunchy, Flavoured
• Country of origin: New Zealand

Happy 2026!

New year, new review, and some very fun life admin. I was kindly gifted a sourdough starter at the end of last year (its name is Doughy), so I have been regularly baking beautiful boules and doing what feels morally correct: generously slathering my favourite spreads on still-warm homemade bread. Bliss. I also start marathon training on Monday (for my first international marathon!!!), which means PB4PB will soon be fully back in action. I am a runner fuelled by peanut butter and groovy jams (it says so on my Strava).

I was also blessed last year when I went into the office and two colleagues absolutely nailed it with gifts: Pics Peanut & Chocolate Butter (little treat from Aotearoa), and an echidna plushie (little treat from Japan) to add to my cute anteater collection.

This jar originally launched back in 2021 and quickly sold out, then made a welcome, but only occasional, return thanks to fan demand. It is a solid 8/10!!! It's not as dark as I like my chocolate/peanut butter usually, but it's a pleasant milk/dark choccy combo that is not too sweet. And I do love Whittaker's chocolate, the Kiwis do have that going for them. Plus the crunch of peanuts is very satisfying - would take this over Nutella any day.

If you can get your grubby mitts on a jar, I think it's worth your time.

🥜🍫

Fix & Fogg Everything Butter

Rating: 7/10

• 🥜 Category: Mixed, Smooth/Crunchy, Plain
• Country of origin: New Zealand
• Serving suggestion: With overripe fruit mixed into overnight oats to make it thick and give it a savoury note; thinned with hot water and mixed with a solid combination of sweet-leaning flavours that can hold up to the intense savouriness & nuttiness (e.g. pandan, cinnamon and coconut) to make a spread, topped with a quick fruit compote

The very first time I opened this jar, I’m not going to lie, I didn’t have a lot of hope. It was giving off the same energy as opening that cupboard in the corner of the kitchen that hasn’t seen much sunlight because it’s a little awkward to get to and where you stash stuff you know you won’t use that often as well as the canned goods you know you’ll need when you forget to do a grocery shop and need to rely on pantry staples but are otherwise uninspiring… just me? This jar smelled - please forgive me for lack of creativity - dank.

But I have since spent a bit of time with it. I have in fact taken multiple spoonfuls just out the jar while I'm prepping my overnight oats. I’ll give you a summary of why; because of the combination of nuts and seeds, the texture is really addictive - thick and crunchy, and the taste is complex and leans very heavily savoury. When you pair it with really ripe, really sweet spring/summer in-season fruit (think overripe bananas and tropical fruit), spread it on toast, and add a heavy sprinkle of cinnamon and cardamom... It's great. Breakfast haters will never understand the joie de vivre that a perfectly balanced tasting morning meal inspires.

Not as versatile as a solid peanut butter, or a milder mixed nut butter, but in the right context this baby shines.

Fix & Fogg Smooth Peanut Butter

 

Rating: 5/10

• Served with: Sliced strawberries and banana & cinnamon on toasted Helga’s wholemeal & seeds bread
• 🥜 Category: Peanut, Smooth, Plain
• Country of origin: New Zealand

It's been a while since my last post. Fear not, my peanut butter obsession continues - enough time has passed since I was introduced to the delicious taste of peanuts as a child growing up in South East Asia, and got completely hooked, that there's surely no way it could be a phase. Life has just been a bit of a whirlwind lately and I have simply been consuming peanut butter and not documenting it.

Anyway: today we continue where we left off, on Fix & Fogg peanut butter reviews. The previously reviewed plain jar of peanut butter was finished and promptly replaced with this one sometime in January. But it is mid-February now and I am still going on this jar, because this one turned out to be a bit of a letdown.

I thought I'd enjoy it at first taste, as it initially has a pretty strong peanut taste. We've established already that this is very desirable. But as I continued, I noticed a slight, strange, lipstick, musty cupboard note, and I couldn't stop thinking about it while I ate my toast. Every time I eat this peanut butter I cannot not think about it. I can't really place it, but also I don't want to be thinking about placing it.

I'm almost at the bottom of the jar. So far I've tried putting this on my oats, used it in a savoury noodle recipe, and mixed it into various baked things - you can't tell me I didn't give it a red hot go. A shame, because I loved the last F&F peanut butter I tried! It definitely won't stop me from trying the other nut butters, especially the novelty ones, but I wouldn't repurchase this particular product.

Fix & Fogg Peanut Butter and Jelly

Rating: 7/10

• Served with: Stovetop oatmeal porridge (made with lactose free dairy milk and sweetener), cinnamon, Chobani Fit blueberry Greek yoghurt, sliced strawberries, sliced banana
• 🥜 Category: Peanut, Crunchy, Flavoured
• Country of origin: New Zealand

It has always been an absolute treat for me to go to the grocery store and stare at the peanut butter aisle, but it became even more so when I moved within walking distance to a Woolies and could therefore easily access Fix & Fogg peanut butters.

As soon as I saw this psychedelic jar labelled 'Peanut Butter and Jelly' I knew I had to get it into my hot little hands. The idea of a PB&J spread gave me so much nostalgia and took me right back to the younger version of me who lived in Malaysia and had a penchant for the French toast whose exact recipe I read in a kids magazine one time, Rotiboy coffee buns, and Smucker's Goober Peanut Butter Jelly Stripes. That's right - I had the real peanut butter and jelly, and I wanted to relive that experience.

This is definitely a slightly more grown-up, put-together older sibling of the Goober stuff, no fake jelly and texturally-too-consistent peanut spread, but instead F&F's chunky peanut butter with chewy pieces of freeze-dried raspberries and mixed berries (and apple, apparently). It doesn't shy away from its inner child, though. It's literally (naturally) dyed pink and tastes a lot like raspberry candy.

It's not for everyone. But what it is is whimsical and playful and a good time, and would be lovely in a smoothie or on top of your oats or as a biscuit filling.

Pic's Crunchy Peanut Butter

Rating: 6/10

• Served with: Toasted Abbott's Bakery Country Grain bread; sliced overripe banana; ground cinnamon and cinnamon sugar
• 🥜 Category: Peanut, Crunchy, Plain
• Country of origin: New Zealand

My first review of a nut butter from our Kiwi neighbours! Expect there to be more soon, as (spoiler) I'm a fan of Pic's and Fix and Fogg nut butters.

My partner is a crunchy peanut butter person, always. (I'm mostly a smooth person but also a crunchy peanut butter with jam person - actually, it doesn't matter, I like both.) One of my favourite things to do on a Tuesday night is scour both the Woolworths and Coles 'sneak peek' catalogues for the upcoming week (FYI - new weekly specials drop on Wednesdays) and circle the best deals: when a good peanut butter is half price, guess what is going straight to my pantry the next day.

Anyway, when Pic's was a half-price special I alerted him to this good news, as I remember really enjoying the smooth variety, and he went and bought the crunchy version. When I had breakfast at his the other day you bet I had to snap a pic and write out my thoughts.

Is there such thing has too crunchy a peanut butter? I think the answer to that might be yes, because this was ridiculously hard to spread! I of all people would know how to store natural peanut butters - but after what seemed to be hours of stirring, shaking, and flipping upside down - the texture wouldn't budge. It's so solid! It's like whole peanuts smooshed into a jar with some salt and minimal oil.

Pic's crunchy peanut butter: 1, toast: 0. Lots of crumbs flying around everywhere. Bread structure holding on for dear life. Unfortunate, because the taste was good, as I remember: enjoyably salty, obviously peanut forward (without the dark roasted taste I'm now really used to).

I'd try it in a peanut sauce next time, when spreadability would not be an issue, but as a breakfast staple or dessert ingredient I cannot rate. I have since seen a 'smunchy' version which I am keen to try...