Candy recipe substitution question

[rajoress]

I have a recipe to make chocolate crunch; it comes from the Mast Brothers. I'd like to make it nut-free and I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas on what to substitute for the peanut butter,if anything. It seems like this combination will make a nice texture so I don't want to lose that by removing the peanut butter but need something easy and quick and nut-free. I think I'll probably just try it without the peanut butter but thought I'd throw the question out there first. Any ideas welcome!

Thanks,
Ruth

 

Chocolate Crunch

Recipe adapted from Rick and Michael Mast, "Mast Brothers Chocolate: A Family Cookbook" (Little, Brown)

 

1½ pounds dark chocolate, chopped

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces

2 tablespoons peanut butter

1 tablespoon honey

4 cups puffed rice cereal

 

[Lisa Shock]

The peanut butter may help hold it together. You could try Speculoos (homemade or commercial) or one of the other cookie butters.

[jmacnaughtan]

Try replacing it with dulce de leche.  The amount used compared to the chocolate is tiny, so it shouldn't change much.

[rajoress]

Both great ideas - thanks!

[Chocolot]

I think you need another fat if you remove peanut butter. How about sunflower seed butter?

[Tri2Cook]

I'd probably just replace it with more butter if my only worry was that simply omitting it would mess with the texture. It looks like it's only real purpose, beyond adding more fat, is to add another flavor to the mix so, unless you want to add another flavor, butter should work just fine. Although the dulce de leche and speculoos do sound like they'd be tasty substitutions...

[Quesmoy]

You could try using soy butter, it is the same texture and has a very similar taste to peanut butter. I have to agree that the Dulce de Leche does sound kind of good, and I don't think it would change the texture to much.

[CatPoet]

But peanutbutter and soy can be linked allergies since peanuts are not nuts and true nut allergic people are not allergic to peanuts most often  and peanut is a bean.  

 

I have done a similar recipe and I replace the peanut butter with nutfree  chocolate spread and it worked fine.