The Quiet Dignity of the Fluffernutter

Let me tell you something about fluffernutters–they’ve gotta be just about the goofiest thing I’ve tried while working on this website.

I mean, I’ve done the Elvis, the Elvis in Hawaii, the British Rail sandwich, Fairy Bread, a 10″ high Dagwood, several carb on carb monstrosities, and even made spaghetti and chicken soup croquettes. Coming up next is the Fool’s Gold Loaf. Look, I’m no Dennis Lee, but I’ve done some weird stuff on this site.

The fluffernutter is just silly though. First, there’s the matter of the name. Fluffernutter. It’s just… well, goofy. It doesn’t take a linguistics expert to put together the etymology of this one–“fluffer” for marshmallow fluff and “nutter” for peanut butter–but the end result is a kind of overly-precious sounding faux-toddler word. There’s a more adult take on the portmanteau that’s possible through some deliberate misuse of porn terms, but that calls into question the provenance of the white sticky stuff in the sandwich, and this is a family blog, kids. Let’s keep it clean here.

Then there’s the matter of the actual sandwich itself.

Ingredients:

• Squishy white bread, untoasted. This may be the worst possible base for a sandwich. Without texture, without flavor, without even the slight bit of interest a bit of browning in the toaster would give it, this bread exists merely as a container into which one slops the other ingredients.
• Marshmallow Creme (or fluff). Imagine that you took a mass of marshmallow stuff and fluffed it up into a light, airy, spreadable form! And now imagine that as soon as you try to actually spread the stuff, the air pockets collapse and it becomes a sticky, stretchy mass of regular old marshmallow stuff. It’s probably not going to spread onto regular old untoasted squishy white bread very well, is it?
• Peanut butter. Well thank god, finally a sensible ingredient. Peanut butter’s good for you, right? It’s a great source of protein, since it’s made entirely of peanuts. Well, mostly peanuts. Peanuts, sugar, molasses, hydrogenated vegetable oils, mono- and di-glycerides, and salt. More fat and carbs than protein. Still, it’s got more nutritional value than the bread or the sweet stuff so let’s call it a win in this situation.

Well it’s not like there’s a whole lot to unpack with this one. Let’s get right to it, shall we?

I managed to find a Solo brand Marshmallow Creme and the the Kraft brand pictured above. (and let me tell you, it’s not always easy to find this stuff in the grocery store. You might think you’d find it next to the marshmallows. Not always!)

One day I'll learn not to apply logic to the problem of finding things in the grocery store

— Sandwich Death Panel Czar (@JimBehymer) March 13, 2016

Anyway, between the two, I found the Kraft marginally softer and easier to spread. It must be that “jet-puffed” quality that makes it ever so minimally fluffier than its competitor. I somehow managed to spread a relatively thin layer on a slice of bread (fair warning though: if you try to spread it too thin, it’ll rip the bread to crumbs), and some peanut butter on another slice.

…and that’s all there is to it, really. Put the two slices together and eat.

To be honest, it’s actually pretty good. It’s also every bit as goofy as you think it might be. My 9 year old loved them, and I’ll admit to indulging in a few of these along with him over the past couple of weeks. I mean, I had the marshmallow fluff right there, what was I going to do with it? Try a bunch of different nut butters, like I did with the Elvis? Eh, I’ve been there. I tried a couple–almond, cashew–but they weren’t notably different from the peanut butter version. What am I going to do with a big tub of marshmallow fluff? Roast it? Make Rice Krispie treats? Hot cocoa? S’Mores?

Wait a minute…

I’ve still got that Speculoos cookie butter left over from the Elvis post, which is somewhat similar in flavor to graham crackers. And I picked up a chocolate bar at the dollar store, ’cause I’m classy like that.

The assembly is similar. Bread. Marshmallow fluff on one side, cookie butter on the other. Arrange the segments of chocolate for maximum coverage.

It doesn’t make any sense to have a cold S’More fluffernutter though, does it? That chocolate is going to need to be melted. The sandwich is going to have to be heated. Rather than heating it on a stick over a fire though, I’m going to fry it in a pan with butter. And since we’re already past the point of soft bread, I’m going to toast it first, so that the marshmallow fluff is easier to spread.

You might be tempted to cover the pan while cooking this sandwich. I made that mistake. Don’t. The marshmallow fluff is half-melted already, and that chocolate doesn’t take long to heat up. Once these ingredients are fully melted, they’re squishing out the sides of the bread and your sandwich is going to be a literal hot mess. Oh man is it good though.

In retrospect, I could have used some kind of soft chocolate spread, or that combination peanut butter / chocolate stuff that comes in a jar, instead of making it into a hot sandwich. I liked the crisp texture though, despite the mess factor of the extreme meltiness.

So that’s it. That’s everything we can possibly do with this sandwich. There’s nothing gross, or completely unreasonable we can do to make a fluffernutter better or worse. It’s just peanut butter and marshmallow fluff.

Except….

Well, the Wikipedia page says that sometimes people will put a little something extra in their fluffernutters. Something sweet, like a banana–no, we’ve done that. Something salty, though, bacon being a specifically mentioned possibility…

I hate to come off as a one trick pony, but I’ve often found that in a sweet/salty sandwich, SPAM works better than bacon. It’s less intrusive: the simple salty/savory addition is uncomplicated by the smokiness and crunchy/chewiness of bacon. Call me crazy, and I’m calling myself crazy for thinking it, but SPAM might be pretty good in this sandwich.

I’m pretty sure this is the worst idea I’ve had yet for this site, but what the hell.

I cut a couple slices off a hunk of spam at what I consider to be the perfect spam-frying thickness–just thick enough that you get a nice crisp outer crust enclosing a layer of juicy fatty salty porky mush. 1/8″ to 3/16″ is about right. I browned 2 slices nicely in a pan and added them to an ordinary fluffernutter.

I looked at it and thought, man. This is going to be gross. The 9yo looked at it, looked at me, and said “Dad, that is going to be gross.”

We both knew we were going to eat the thing though.

It was amazing.

Pork and peanut butter is a tried-and-true combination. So is sweet and salty. Spam bridges the two halves of this sandwich and takes this silly bit of fluff, this sweet desserty thing that’s sandwich-like enough to justify stuffing it in your hole and calling it a meal, and turns it into something substantial. Or nearly substantial, anyway. It’s still made of marshmallow fluff.

There are a ton of other ways I could enhance this sandwich (next stop: Froot Loops), but I’m not sure I’ll find a better one. And to be honest, there are other sandwiches this month that I’m looking forward to trying. So this is going to be it for the fluffernutter, at least for me, at least for now. Let me know if you have any favorite variants in the comments, though!