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On today's episode of Claire Creates, this one hits close to home. I am going to attempt to make homemade Nutter Bars. Nutter Buddy? Nutter Bars? When I was a kid, they were Nutter Bars. Sometimes I have a like a mental block where I'm just like, "What do we like what should we what do we make? What My gosh, is that English?" Yeah, it was a mental block. Sometimes I'm just like, "What do we even make on Claire Creates?" Cuz like I often like to have some connection to the subject, good or bad. My mom didn't buy these, but like my childhood friends, they always had them at their
house. And so that's where I had them. When I was a kid, they were Nutter Bars. And I remember the exact moment I had the first one. I was in fifth grade. I remember eating them layer by layer, which 100% is how you have to eat a Nutter Bar. And I haven't had one in 30 years. And I'm just going to call them Nutter Bars cuz that's what they are to me. Wafers with peanut butter. So here's the two bars. Mhm, smells like peanut butter. But I think if I remember correctly, there's four layers of wafers. It's not too hard. You can just pry the top layer right off. It looks delicious.
Smells good. I mean, the peanut butter smells good. The chocolate doesn't smell so good. Way too sweet. It's very light, kind of dissolves in your mouth. I like how thin all the layers are. Like most snack foods, it's like a texture thing. The peanut butter is good. It's just so sweet. This is going to be a fun one. I'm and I've been looking forward to doing a recreates for Nutter Buddy because it feels so straightforward. It's like the wafer, the peanut butter, the chocolate coating. So I'm going to look at the ingredients, but I don't it's not going to really tell me like I don't need to know the ingredients really to know what I'm going to do. But let's take a look.
Maybe there's some surprises, not in a good way. Okay, ingredients. Dextrose, enriched flour, \{parentheses\} wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate \{bracket\} vitamin B1, riboflavin, \{bracket\} vitamin B2, folic acid, \{close parentheses\} peanut butter, sugar, palm and soybean oils with TBHQ and citric acid to protect flavor, palm and palm kernel oil, water. Contains 2% or less of each of the following: cocoa, soybean oil, cornstarch, salt, mono- and diglycerides, soy lecithin, baking soda, citric acid, artificial flavor, whey \{parentheses\} milk, soy flour, dried egg whites. This
is easy. It's like if you take out all the ingredients that are preservatives, you have like flour, sugar, peanut butter, and then like the tiniest bit of cocoa because I'm sure that this is not like a real chocolate coating. The most important thing for my homemade version is that you can separate the layers and eat them like one piece at a time like the original. And so I have to just create a peanut butter filling that in some ways is like a little nonstick and can like be peeled away. When you pull it apart, there's a kind of tackiness and like nonstick nonstickiness to the filling. It says there's 2% or less of dried egg whites, so it's like I'm like thinking should I put a little egg white in the wafer?
I think a lot of it is just total dehydration, like totally dry um wafer. six bars. I can do six. I can do six, I think. One bar is 11 and 1/2 cm by 2 and 1/2. Let's see the height, 1.6 cm, more or less. There's four layers and one layer including chocolate coating and peanut butter is 1/2 cm or so. Notably, it has this crosshatch pattern that's on an angle. So that's something I definitely want to achieve. That to me is like very classic Nutter Butter. So my first step is going to be cook the wafers, make and cook wafers, and then as a sub step, it's going to be to cut them. And then another sub step is going to be to dehydrate. Number two is peanut butter filling. And then three is assembly, which is like stacking and
shaping. And then four is chocolate coating. Okay? That's my game plan. Recreate Nutty Bar's wafer, take two. I wrote down an ingredient list for the wafers. So, I'm going to grab that. This is butter. I'm going to remelt it. think there's butter in it? That's like the palm oil. What's the matter? Does it smell like matter baby in here? What? Matter baby. What's a matter baby? Chris, do you smell that? What? Do you smell matter baby? What's a matter baby? No, what's what's what's the matter with you?
These guys, right? He's going to go to work someday. And try it. Is that matter baby? I'm so sick of you two. You just shut the hell up. So, I'm going to replace some of the water with egg whites. So, I'm going to do let's take two tablespoons out. All right, I'm going to just make everything in this container. So, I'm going to start with the liquid. My melted butter, melted and cooled. Then I have some vanilla extract. I think before I add all the dry, I'm going to mix them together. Cake flour so that it's like super tender. Powdered sugar. Corn starch. The corn starch is a big key to the crisp texture. Some baking powder. That's going to give me the leavening. And a little salt.
Now, I'm just going to dump I'm going to try to do these on the diagonal so that I can get the squares going in the right direction. They're nonstick plates. I might need a little bit of oil. And my goal is to be able to cut two to three pieces of wafers side by side from one. I don't hear any sizzling, which I don't know if that's a good or bad sign. There it goes. Oop. Oh my gosh. I forced the lid down. Whoa. So, maybe it maybe needs a little more time. I don't know where we got these bamboo tongs, but they're super handy for stuff like this.
You know what might be easier than a knife is a cutter. Can I fit three side by side? I can. They're not super uniform. Yeah. I want to get these dehydrating before I cook the rest of the wafers to see how they are after they're dry and if they're the right texture and everything if I want to make any changes and how much they shrunk. So, I'm going to get that started. So, I got three batches of wafers cooked and cut and they're dehydrating. I'm going to pivot to peanut butter. Homemade peanut butter is usually pretty fluid cuz like you're just getting all those oils from the peanut. So, like peanut butter from the store kind of has like a whipped thick texture, but it's usually cuz there's like stabilizers and emulsifiers. And so, I
think I'd I'm definitely going to have to do the cooked sugar to stream it in as a kind of emulsifier just to keep everything together. I think the final quantity of peanut butter that I'm going to end up using is probably pretty small. So, I'm just going to do half of these and then the rest will keep around for snacking. I'll add a pinch of salt. Another thing I like to add to homemade peanut butter is just a little squeeze of honey. The honey is for flavor. I'm going to be adding other sugar to this. Let's turn this on. And it'll start to get more fluid as the
oils heat up just from the friction. All right, now it's starting to spin, which is good. Smells good. I can see how smooth it is. It's actually at this point really well emulsified cuz of that's what blending it does, but it's also loose. So, I'm definitely going to go for the cooked sugar method. Let me grab the wafers. I want to just take a quick look. I'm going to set that aside for a minute. Not all of these have been in there for the same amount of time. This one curled a lot. So, it's like that's going to make it really hard to use. I do think I'm going to need to put some kind of a rack or something over to keep them flat
as they dehydrate it. But, something that you can't be something solid cuz I need that water I need that moisture to evaporate. Because it's still hot, I'm not sure it's actually going to be totally crisp. I think it should be drier. I might want to increase the powdered sugar a little bit. It's a little bit denser I think than their version. I'm going to add a little bit more baking powder, a little bit more powdered sugar, and a little bit more egg white. I'm going to just modify the batter a little bit.
I'm just whisk some more stuff into that same quart container. I might just need to blend it a lot. Some reason it's like grainy. Grainy, yeah. So, the grainy batter doesn't seem to make any difference. Just going to You're telling me I have to make six of these? That's kind of a lot. I think that's too many. The wafers are dehydrating and I have my peanut butter. I just looked up the recipe that I used for the filling when I made Nutter Butters, the cookie, which I think is everything I wanted it to be. It's like a sweetened peanut butter mixture with a little butter to increase the fat content and it's cooked sugar, so it like makes the whole thing kind of tight and firm. So, the reason I'm using this method is because if I were just to
add powdered sugar to this to sweeten it, it would probably loosen the texture rather than thicken it. The last time I did this I did it in a stand mixer, but I'm feeling low-tech these days. I'd rather just use my hand mixer. So, I'm going to get my sugar into my saucepan, couple of tablespoons of my light corn syrup. I'm going to add my vanilla, probably a teaspoon, a little bit of extra salt, not a lot. There's it's pretty well seasoned. I'm going to add a few tablespoons of water to this and we're going to cook this into a sugar syrup to 248. This is coming up to a boil. The quantity in there is really small, so it's not going to take long. I'll kind of back
off the heat a little bit as it reaches that temp so I don't overshoot it. We're at 230 six, 37, almost there. So, I'm going to get the bowl on a towel so it doesn't slide around. 46. I'm going to let it boil for another 15 seconds and then I think and then I'm just going to go. The butter is going to add richness and it's going to help like smooth everything out. I want it to have almost the texture of like a really soft dough. Once that butter is incorporated all test the texture. It's looking pretty good.
Let's get it on the parchment and see. It really does have that dough texture that I want. So, I feel like this is good. I'm going to taste it. It's not as smooth. Ooh, actually it does kind of melt. It's really good. It's super peanutty. It's sweet but well-balanced. I think it actually could use a little bit of salt. This is just the texture that I want. You could peel it off. I kind of nailed this. Yeah, it looks like you nailed it. I got cows. What a very encouraging word. I always am saying encouraging things. I think you say encouraging words, but you also say things like, "I don't think it's going to work." Oh, and that's just being honest.
That's just you know, that's a housewife's trope. It's like, "I was just being honest." And they say like really mean things. These have to be really, really thin. The layer of peanut butter is almost paper thin. So, like a lot thinner than this, basically. So, let's see that peeling effect. Another thing that's good about this filling, I don't think it's going to hydrate the wafers. The wafers are going to get really dry and I think stay that way cuz there's maybe the smallest bit of water content from the butter, but in general, I think
they'll stay crisp. So, I think this is a good thickness. So, now let's take our wafers out of the oven. So, I made the peanut butter filling. I made and cooked the wafers. I cut them into layers and I'm about to finish that dehydration step. So, let's pull them out and see. So, they've been in for the better part of an hour. I like how the Brits say, "Let's have a look." Have a look. I would say, "Let's take a look." I watched the series Slow Horses. Very entertaining. It's mostly just that um Gary Oldman is like so good. So, I'm going to get these on here.
They are still flexible, but they're going to dry. We'll let them cool. Cut. Hold on. All right. Well, here's what we're doing. We're turning all of these over because the tops dehydrated, the bottoms didn't. Darn it. You're making good time. As my dad used to say during every family road trip. Let's get these back in. I'm going to just put them directly in on the rack. I'm going to turn it up to the highest warming setting. The highest 190. Let's try it. Put it on wafer setting. On the nut nutty buddy setting. Nutty buddy. Yeah, what is it? I see the crater. Recreate nutty bars assemble take two.
Let's take these out. They've been in 20 minutes. I stuck a rack over top because they were curling, which I probably should have done from the very beginning. They curled a little bit more than I would have liked. Let's see where we are. They're still hot. Oh, okay. Oh. I'm going to nail it. I don't care if they're a little curved. So crisp. Here. Right? Yeah. I got to uh-huh. Yeah. Oh I'm going to cross off dehydrate and we're going to go into assembly. So, what I'm going to do is uncover my filling. I'm going to take 18 of the wafers. They shrunk, but I'm going to shape them. So they're going to get smaller. So it's like they're a little bigger, but I need the extra room. So let's start applying these. So that's
three rows of six. I should have more than enough filling. But they're wildly different sizes. 2 4 6 8 one more. 9 So, the idea is this going to peel? Come on, parchment. Pretty good. I like how it's already taking on the shape of the grooves of the waffle. Do I flip the entire thing over and then just cut them out? Peel the entire parchment off and then cut them out. Ooh. Okay. I'm going to try to peel off the entire piece of parchment.
I'm going to cut them out and get them on here. The evenness is pleasing to me. So, now I want to stack them and I need to kind of divide them up by size cuz they're not all uniform. So, I'm going to kind of make groups of three according to size. These two are pretty close. I feel like this guy wants to go with this guy and this guy. Maybe? No. Maybe this guy? And maybe this. No. Maybe that. Everyone needs a lid. I have a lot of lid options. So, here I have Oh, see, I just tried to compress that and I already broke this one. They need to be evened out, and I'm hoping that as I do this it helps to fuse all the layers together. I
I sort of I feel a little more confident now about them fusing. It seems like that's going to happen. So, this is going to thin it out a bit. Or just make the dimension smaller all around. Mine is bigger. It's still to me like recognizably a Nutty Bar. I could go even further with the shaving down. Nutty Bar. Did I say Nutty Bar? You said Nutty Bar. Nutty Bar I said Nutty Bar. I don't care what it says. Recreates Nutty Bars chocolate take one. Anytime there's any type of chocolate on one of the snack foods, I immediately know I'm going to
like make it better just by using good quality chocolate. And I'm going to temper. This is a semi-sweet 66%. I have to remind myself for the 100th time what my temperatures are for tempering. But, we're going to get started and get these enrobed, and we'll call it a day. Let's get this melting. I need my thermometer. You Oh, wait. I need to look up my temps. Are you asking ChatGPT? No, I'm looking back through my old notes. Don't ask chat. Said that it was originally called Nutty Buddies, but then I further did research. Might be Nutty Bars. There you
know, there's a note at the bottom that says ChatGPT can be wrong. So, I melted the chocolate. It was melting so slowly, so I increased the heat, and now it's like I maybe went a little above 120, which is my upper threshold for melting. I added a little cool water to bring the temp of the water down. And now I need to cool this to 82 to 84. Probably just not even on the water. I don't want to shock it. I'm just going to let the room temp take the temperature down. Like, I don't need a snap. If I needed a snap, like for Mallomars, then it would be really important. It's just important that it doesn't feel like it's immediately melts some your hands. The are really good. Mallomars were a huge success.
What's been your favorite of all of the recreates so far? I think Cosmic Brownie was good. The zebra cakes were good. Did I do peanut M&M's? No, I haven't, but if you want to. I love peanut M&M's. So, we're still at 100. It's come down a good amount. I think we're going to keep going. I think Kinder Bueno was the best. You think Kinder Bueno was my biggest failure was the best one? Coca-Cola was pretty bad. So, I'm at 86 in bringing the temp down.
I have I just have a couple degrees to go. A little ice cube here. And I was just like quickly cooling down the side of the bowl then stirring. It seems like that did it. That brought me down to 83 84, which is in my range. And now I need to bring it back up to 88 to 90. That's our working temp for the chocolate. So, I'm going to put the water on like 125. Which will make probably be And then I'll turn it off and I'll be just enough to keep this at my working temp, I hope. So, I'm at 87 88. I'm going to try to enrobe quickly. And I think maybe I do need to keep this warm. What I'm going to do is I'm going to dip the bottom.
Well, you know what? I'm just going to I'm going to roll the whole thing. Dip the bottom, get the chocolate covering it, and then I'm going to really tap off the excess as well as I can. And it's important to me to be able to see pattern of the waffle. Chocolate is so sticky, so like it gets on everything and it's hard to work clean. There's the first one. I feel like the chocolate could be thinner, so I'm going to try to maybe do more to scrape and tap. Maybe I need to paint it on all surfaces. So, now working quickly cuz my chocolate's going to set, I am going to just coat all of my Nutty Bars. I'm going to pop these in the fridge till the thirst going to set hopefully fast. They're already starting to set. I think it's going to taste
really good. Nutty bars taste take one. Going to cross my last one off the list, chocolate coating. And then let's pull them from the fridge and take a look. Okay, the chocolate is set. So I think we're we're ready. Ooh, guys look. Looks just like it. Look at the bottom. All right, I really feel like the chocolate is tempered and I love the way the bottom looks. Very different proportions obviously. Mine's a little flatter, there's a little taller, mine's a little wider and longer. But to me the key thing is going to be can I separate the layers?
Pretty sturdy. Feeling good about that. My wafers are thinner than theirs. I didn't really see that coming. But I actually feel like there's a similar and mine is just like a little bit wetter I suppose from the filling. But you get the distinct layers. There's a cat hair. Come on, not everything's a cat hair. Sometimes it's just a fiber. The chocolate coating is nice. I feel like the thickness of the chocolate I thought it was going to be thicker. It's pretty even and thin all the way around. Mhm. It doesn't quite have the airiness. Like there's not as many little air bubbles, but it's still really light and like kind of bitter from the chocolate. But also really similar. It is sort of unmistakably a Nutty Bar, but also
totally different. This is one of my best I think. All right, I'm going to try to eat up the top layer off. Nailed it, right? I almost wish I had used milk chocolate. Because the wafer's not that sweet, peanut butter's not that sweet. It's like a almost like too grown up, like too fancy. Mhm. I like it better in the middle with that chocolate. Mhm. Here, let's see if I can physically pry them apart. And then I love how, just like in the original, the filling peels off. All right, guys. I really did my work here. I would show up in culinary school, or chef would come around and if you like had your mise en place, he'd be like, "Claire came today.
We're like we're soaking your onions to peel them." I showed up. Mhm. These are so good. I could say to eat one later. This one was so fun. In terms of special equipment, it was really just a waffle iron and then like a lot of patience, but makeable at home. So good, so fancy. I could like make them into little bite-size pieces and sell them then in a chocolate shop for very expensive as like little bonbons. Delicious, right up my alley. I feel like I did justice to the original. This is the opposite of Kinder Bueno, which I've been told we can't do until we hit 1.5 million. And as always, if you have ideas for more Claire Recreates, put them in the comments below. Tell me how good it is.
uniquely something different. What? What did you just say? It's elevated. But it's a nutty bar. It's fancy. Yeah, it's just a fancy nutty bar. It's its own thing. my job. You did. Okay. Let's go home.
