Peanut butter and honey on toast might seem like an odd combination but trust me, it’s a wonderful thing. I was first introduced to it by my old school friend Hina. Hina was (and still is I believe) Japanese and the Japanese like their peanut butter a bit sweeter than us Brits. So after school, we’d often scamper back to her boarding house and eat peanut butter on toast slathered in honey, which I later christened ‘Hinabutter’.
Anyway, so I forgot all about Hinabutter until I purchased an insanely expensive pot of raw honey recently. Apparently the 40p honey I’d been buying all these years was no better than eating filtered dog turds. So did it really taste all that different?
Well no, not really but there’s a quite a significant difference between the two despite tasting very similar. For a start, regular honey tends to be pasteurised and filtered, which is said to destroy the honey’s natural vitamins and nutrients. Whereas raw honey, comes straight from the hive so remains untreated, unheated and unfiltered. This means, unlike regular honey, it retains most of it’s nutritional properties and can even include the odd bit of wax, pollen and a couple of bees knees (literally). Although don’t worry, raw honey is often strained to remove wax/knees so no need to freak out, humans have been eating raw honey for thousands of years. Anyway that’s enough eduction for one day, now where was I?
Oh yeah, so for the past week, I’ve been pouring honey all over my peanut butter on toast like some kind of deranged Pooh Bear which doesn’t exactly make for a balanced breakfast. So I chucked in some pears and a bit of ricotta to help balance it out and to help cut through the sticky sweetness of it all. Bananas I’m sure would work wonderfully too but as I can’t stand the little buggers, I think I’ll stick to me pears thanks guvna… Not sure why I’ve gone all cockney but there you go. Enjoy!
Peanut butter, honey & pear on toast
Serves 1 / Hands on time 5 mins / Total time 5 mins / V
2 slices of bread
Knob of butter
Crunchy peanut butter
Honey, preferably raw or organic
½ conference pear, cored and sliced
1-2 tbs of vegetarian *Ricotta
Sprinkle of pumpkin seeds
Method
Toast the bread of your choice and top with an even layer of butter and then peanut butter. Drizzle the toast with a couple of teaspoons of honey and spread evenly with a knife. Top with slices of pear, drizzle with a bit of extra honey and serve with a sprinkling of pumpkin seeds and a good dollop of ricotta.
If you’ve had a go at making any of my recipes, I’d love to hear from you. Follow me now @corrieheale and tag your recipe pictures using #corriesrabbitfood.
V– Vegetarian
*Ricotta is traditionally made with animal rennet but you can get vegetarian varieties. UK supermarket home brands tend to be, click here.
corriesrabbitfood.com 
Interesting what you say about honey. We visit Romania most summers and bring back raw honey, usually a 2 litre bottle, bees knees and all. However, because now I’m fed 1/2 lemon (grated) with honey every day (for health though I like it), we ran out before this year’s visit so we ‘ordered’ more and will be taking back 5 litres this year. I think this means about 7.5kg. The different honeys definitely have a very different taste here in Romania, depending from which flowers the bees collect. Three popular ones are from the Linden tree, from pine, and from acacia. There is also, of course, honey from bees collecting from a variety of flowers and it I can’t taste any difference between these. The last of these is the one I prefer and that’s the one we shall be taking back
You say the pasteurised, filtered, basically buggered up of honey sold in UK supermarkets is rubbish. I’m sure that’s true, but it’s also true of much we buy, especially milk. Here in Romania I drink milk ‘straight from the cow’. The taste is wonderful and, in my opinion, this raw milk is much better for you.
I’ll try your Hinabutter when I get home.
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Thanks for your message, I always enjoy reading your thoughts 🙂
Wow a 2 litre bottle of raw honey, that is a lot and I bet it ain’t cheap but like you, I do think honey is worth spending the money on.
My boyfriend Jamie was only telling me the other day how good raw cows milk is, unfortunately there aren’t many cows in London but will try it first chance I get. Thanks for the tip and thanks again for showing such an interest in my blog. I really do appreciate how much you enjoy my posts.
Let me know what you think of Hinabutter! It goes very well with a cup of strong tea 🙂
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For your interest, I have paid about £6/lb for the raw acacia honey here. Others are cheaper. It is the most expensive. Fortunately the bees could collect from the acacia flowers this year whereas there is nothing of the second favourite for Romanians, from Linden, because the weather was not good for that season, June, so the bees did not collect. I don’t like the taste so it’s nothing for me. I think there will be good sunflower honey here this year; the sunflowers look excellent whereas last year they looked ‘burnt’ from the drought and I doubt there was any honey from them. Something strange I have eaten here, again popular with Romanians, is bunches of acacia flowers dipped in a batter and deep fried, in sunflower oil of course being Romania. Only when I lived in Romania was I here when the acacia trees were in bloom so I haven’t eaten it for a dozen years or so but it’s very good.
In the city here you have to get up early to buy the raw milk in the market and get it back in the fridge before the day really warms up, otherwise in a couple of hours it will be sour. In the countryside you don’t have the same problem – just milk the cow 😜. I have recently discovered a farm only 5 miles from where we live in UK which sells raw milk (as you’ll know designated farms are the only places you can buy it – no doubt as a result of lobbying by Arla and other major dairy businesses!) so I’ll be checking that out when we get back. Apart from drinking it raw we will make what Miss Muffet would have called ‘curds and whey’; until now we’ve had to buy it from the Romanian shop in Leeds but, as everything, it’s better home made. I’m pleased Jamie backs me up about raw milk!
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