The Good: Does not taste bad, Very easy to use, No storage issues
The Bad: Exceptionally expensive, Not distinctly cashew flavored, Not crunchy, Nutrition.
The Basics: Jif Creamy Cashew Butter is entirely unmemorable and likely to be overshadowed by any food it is paired with, making it easy not to recommend.
My father is – or used to be, in my childhood – a huge fan of cashew nuts. So, given that it had been so long since I reviewed Jif Mocha Cappuccino Flavored Hazelnut Spread (that’s here!), I thought it might be fun to try Jif’s new Creamy Cashew Butter for review and the potential as a gift to my father. Sadly for the patriarch, he will not be getting Creamy Cashew Butter for his stocking this year and I feel like a chump for shelling out $6.00 just to try a 12 oz. container.
Creamy Cashew Butter is essentially peanut butter, made with cashews instead of peanuts, and sadly this does not make for an inherently exceptional product on any front!
Basics
Jif Creamy Cashew Butter is a flavored nut spread produced by Jif. It is a new nut spread that is part of their expanding line of other nut butters. It would not surprise me if this ended up on a clearance shelf near you in the days to come; it is vastly overpriced for the volume and not memorable on the tongue.
Jif’s Creamy Cashew Butter comes in the company’s small 12 oz. plastic jar. The Creamy Cashew Butter is light pale yellow-tan and creamy and the container comes with an easy to unscrew lid that keeps it fresh use after use!
Ease Of Preparation
Jif is a peanut butter-like spread, so there is not much needed in terms of preparation. Simply unscrew the plastic cap, tear off the foil safety seal below that and consume! It is that simple.
Taste
Opening the container of Jif Creamy Cashew Butter, the consumer is greeted by a warm, nutty smell. The aroma is not distinct to cashews (truth be told,I’ve never found cashews to be terribly aromatic or distinctive). The scent is not uninviting, but it is not powerful. For some reason, I’m associating the scent with a Chinese food recipe my father used to make that had had both fish and tomatoes (not my favorite).
In the mouth, Jif Creamy Cashew Butter is dry and buttery, with an indistinct nut flavor. The usual meatiness of cashew nut flavor only asserts itself as the cashew butter’s aftertaste. There is an unburnt nut flavor that mixes with the oily, buttery initial flavor to keep this from tasting like peanut butter, but largely, until the aftertaste kicks in, this is a shockingly indistinct flavor. In fact, given how the Cashew Butter cannot even be reasonably called sweet, it is a surprise that Jif produced this.
The flavor of the Creamy Cashew Butter is so weak that when it is added to a sandwich, the flavor of any jelly or jam I have yet tried easily overwhelms the cashew butter flavor. In fact, some breads even overcome the flavor of the cashew butter!
While the flavor of cashews briefly crosses the tongue for a few seconds, after the mass has been swallowed, there is no distinct or lasting aftertaste from Jif Creamy Cashew Butter.
Nutrition
Obviously, as a nut spread, Jif cannot do much about the lack of nutrition with their spread. Given that the spread is made largely of roasted cashews, sunflower oil, and sugar, this was never going to be a nutritious product. There is nothing terrible or unrecognizable in this spread, though.
It is also not the best product in the world for you on a nutrition front. A 2 Tbsp serving of Jif Creamy Cashew Butter has 200 calories, 160 of which are from fat. Those 18 grams of fat represent 27% of one’s RDA of fat. Unsurprisingly, one serving is 3% of your RDA of carbohydrates, though there is a decent 4 grams protein in this spread. There are, however, 105 mg of sodium in the nut spread. This is not a food to try to live off of, even with its smattering of Iron and Calcium.
This Cashew Butter is not marked as kosher and includes an allergy warning for those allergic to cashews, almonds, hazelnuts, and brazil, macadamia, and pine nuts.
Storage/Cleanup
Keep the spread sealed and it will last for quite some time. The container we bought a couple months ago would have expired on May 22 2014, had I not eaten it all up! This spread remains supple and spreadable indefinitely.
As a product made mostly of nuts, the Jif Creamy Cashew Butter is very easy to clean up. Simply washing it off with hot water helps clean off anything this gets on. Hot water is recommended because it is a bit oily.
Overall
I usually try to reserve any food in the 2 – 3 range for foods that might taste bad, but have nutritional value; for Jif Creamy Cashew Butter, I made an exception. Jif Creamy Cashew Butter does not taste bad at all, but it is indistinct and so very expensive for what one gets that it gets knocked down appropriately. Consumers will not have a bad flavor experience with this, they will have an unmemorable one and that is way too much to pay for something unmemorable!
For other food reviews, please check out my reviews of:
Jell-O Chocolate Mousse
Kernel Season's Kettle Corn Popcorn Seasoning
Nutella Hazelnut Spread
2.5/10
For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing!
© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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