Gadget: Giles & Posner Peanut Butter Maker

If you've never heard of a PBJ sandwich you've been missing out on a classic combination. A staple part of the American diet, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich has been a lunchtime treat for ever.

It's the perfect sandwich dessert – smooth and sumptuous peanut butter with sweet sticky jam. Having scraped the last of the peanut butter from my jar of Sunpat, I was left with no choice but to call upon the services of the Giles & Posner Peanut Butter Maker.

This gadget boldly claims to be able to produce peanut butter from a wide array of nuts and seeds, including peanuts, cashews, macdamias, almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds and more. And supposedly without even a drop of oil or butter.

The machine is actually a bit smaller than I was expecting – about the same height as one of those mini bubble-gum machines. With one slice of bread covered in jam and the other slice as barren as the Gobi Desert, I needed some peanut butter pronto. I grabbed a bulging packet of unsalted cashews.

Setting the knob to smooth, I rammed a load of nuts into the transparent case.

The Peanut Butter Maker literally howled into action. Two minutes later I discovered a small quantity of grainy butter stuck in the snout of Giles & Posner's contraption.

My conclusion – to make decent peanut butter you need nuts and butter, and preferably a large factory. Subsequent attempts with the machine yielded better results, but the outcome was still a long way from Sunpat's finest.

Giles & Posner Peanut Butter Maker

(29.99, www.play.com and www.prezzybox.com; for more information, www.gilesandposner.com)

#149 This article was first published in The Scotsman on April 03, 2010