- (upbeat music) I'm Christina Tosi
the chef, founder, and owner of Milk Bar.
Today, we are going to be giving
my childhood favorite, peanut butter and jelly
a bakeover.
We're here in our Los Angeles Milk Bar.
The spirit of Milk Bar is come in, you're welcome
but I knew there was something that we were missing.
You don't actually even know all the crazy things
that we're dreaming up that don't even make it to the menu.
There was just a great idea, we had it,
we had a great time, bye.
The lab is an invitation into our kitchen
and a few times a week, we open that window,
which is our moments where we're bringing these ideas
that have inspired us to life.
Here to be my thought partner, I got my bestie over here
Scotty B who's the chef of Milk Bar Lab
here in L.A.
I'm taking about peanut butter and jelly
and I think we could create something
that is our love letter
to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
(romantic music) There's this textural dream
that comes with a bite
of a great peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
You have that sort of cloud like bounce
of the two layers of bread.
Then all of a sudden you get this burst of flavor
and your mind is trying to chase around what's happening.
That sweet, fruity flavor that you get from the jelly
or the jam, it's syrupy, it's gelatinous.
When you have a bite,
it's like fireworks in your mouth, right.
A peanut butter and jelly sandwich always gets the job done.
We definitely have our plan,
I think we gotta put it to the test.
We gotta answer some questions about layers and texture.
It's a loaf cake.
- It's a loaf cake.
- It's a love letter to peanut butter and jelly.
Alright, let's get to work.
(playful '70's music)
- If you're doing a play on PB&J.
- Strawberry jam, I think, right?
- Strawberry jam is the play, agreed.
- So what do you do there?
- I like doing a frozen, so maybe sorbet for play.
- So Sorbet, maybe?
- Right, we have a plan.
- Okay, so first up, the sorbet.
My best recommendation when buying strawberries
is the smaller the better and the redder the better.
You want your strawberry sorbet to be as punchy as possible.
Pour them into your blender and puree the heck out of them.
(blender buzzing)
So, from there, strawberry puree,
just into the finest mesh sieve that you have at home
so all that you have left is the most bright,
fruity, strawberry puree.
Smells amazing in here.
We're gonna put the ingredients together
to make the strawberry puree into a strawberry sorbet base.
And as a stabilizer the easiest thing to use is gelatin.
This sheet gelatin is going to go into a bowl of water
and I like to add a few ice cubes
to make sure my water is nice and cold.
It takes two or three minutes,
so while we wait for that to happen,
on a stove top we're gonna heat up
the smallest amount of this strawberry puree
and just some granulated sugar.
We're gonna add in this stuff, this is glucose,
it's an inverted sugar.
Corn syrup at home will do as well.
This actually helps keep the mouthfeel nice and smooth.
A little bit of kosher salt
and then, for a little extra kick, citric acid.
If you don't have access to citric acid,
a little squeeze of lemon will do,
the only thing about lemon is that
it's gonna impart a little bit of flavor.
So if you're using sheet gelatin,
it should be fully flimsy, almost gelified.
From there, you plop it into your pan
and you can see, just contact to heat
starts to melt that gelatine into the mixture.
And I turn it off the second that that gelatine
disappears entirely into our mixture.
Standard ice cream maker, whether its a plug in,
a hand churn, it'll all do the trick.
You're gonna pour that sorbet base straight into the machine
and let her rip for as ever long it takes
to bring that sorbet to this really beautiful,
fluffy but frozen strawberry sorbet state.
(upbeat music)
We can't just use peanut butter.
One because we're now talking about
some sort of frozen layering, right?
My grandma used to always make this peanut butter pie,
it was a lightened peanut butter
but it was cream cheese based.
- Whipping peanut butter in cream cheese
almost gives you a ganache, right?
- [Christina] Yeah.
- And then lighten it up with some whip cream,
I think that's super, super good idea.
- I like this.
I grew up with southern sensibilities
and nothing is better to me
than peanut butter pie, if you haven't had it,
you need to get some.
It's very simple, it always starts with cream cheese.
Now, most people when they're mixing anything
with cream cheese, try and add too many ingredients together
and cream cheese is really tricky.
We're gonna make sure it's a nice temperature
and paddle it down first
before we start to add the other ingredients.
I'm gonna add my creamy peanut butter to the mixture.
I'm gonna add half of it first
just to make sure the cream cheese doesn't start to lump up,
you want this peanut butter cream to be nice and smooth.
Just give the bowl a little scrap down
and I add the rest of the peanut butter.
(mixer humming)
Now that it's come together,
we just sweeten the peanut butter,
so we use confectioner's sugar.
Confectioner's sugar itself has a tendency
to want to clump up as well,
so we're gonna add the confectioner's sugar half
and then the other half.
Looks nice and smooth,
so to that last half of confectioner's sugar,
you're gonna add some kosher salt.
It's nutty, the sweetness is starting to come out,
we might need to make it nice and light
so that it mimics the texture on some level
of that strawberry sorbet.
We're gonna do that by bringing
heavy cream into the mixture.
We need some vanilla extract and I'm going to very slowly
start to stream the heavy cream
into the peanut butter mixture
until it comes together and loosens up.
(chuckling) Real talk, the mixing of anything
is really where it requires time and attention,
so take your time.
The secret when you're trying to add whip cream to anything
is you first have to sacrifice a small amount
into whatever it is that you want to accept it.
It's really getting the mixture ready
so that I can fold the remaining cream in.
My goal is not to deflate the whip cream
I want it to stay light and fluffy
and I try to always make sure that my spatula ends up
so that I'm not pushing the air out of the whip cream.
So, every bit of that white whipped cream
has incorporated entirely into the mixture.
What do you think about cinnamon raisin bread?
- Oh.
- You get the swirl, you get another pop of sweetness
from the raisins.
- And it looks great.
- I mean, we're basically making an ice cream sandwich then.
- Can't be mad at that.
- Dude, how many layers does it go.
- To the roof.
- Is there texture in it.
To the roof!
- Stack in a loaf pan.
- It's also kind of cheeky.
- Right.
- Because you've got a loaf pan.
- Loaf of bread.
- A loaf of bread.
- It's a loaf cake.
- Let's do it.
(laughing)
Cinnamon raisin bread, to me,
is one of those magical things,
really makes me feel like my imagination is churning.
I am going to layer this cinnamon raisin bread in the pan,
it is a perfect game of bread Tetris.
I was a very big Game Boy girl in the '90s,
been training for this moment all my life.
First layer of bread is down,
gonna use one quarter of this peanut butter cream.
If you have an offset spatula at home,
it will be really helpful in zhushing
that peanut butter cream into corners of the loaf pan.
From here, off to the freezer for about five minutes max.
Alright, so, strawberry sorbet is one nice,
beautiful, even layer across the peanut butter.
We're gonna add peanut butter cream again,
another quarter of the cream
and it can go straight on top of the strawberry sorbet.
We're gonna use another quarter of that peanut butter cream
and do the same thing all over again.
And bring it to the freezer, three to five minutes
before you finish it off.
(dreamy music)
Alright, so from here, this PB&J loaf cake
goes off to the freezer.
20, 30 minutes and slice away.
It's time to take a look.
Tap and pull. (mellow music)
That' looks great, my friends.
I'm so excited.
I mean, that's many handsome.
- [Scotty] I would say it looks delicious.
- And what's going on here?
You goin' crunchy?
- I threw together a peanut brittle
that I'm gonna crush up and put on mine.
- Oh, that's brilliant.
PB&J is all about smooth and creamy and rich.
Mm, I love it.
- Fantastic, really smooth.
- Bro, we crushed it.
(laughing)
I'll eat six portions and then be like, dinner, what?
(upbeat music)
Alright, my biggest question is
do you think it's ready to go on the Lab menu?
- I think it's perfect.
- Ice cream sandwich.
- [Scotty] 100%.
- Meets peanut butter and jelly.
Alright, so you heard it here,
peanut butter and jelly bakeover
into this peanut butter and jelly loaf cake
is gonna be available through Scotty's window
at Milk Bar Lab.
You come up and you go, are you crunch or smooth?
- Crunch or smooth?
- Follow us online, @milkbarlab
to figure out when that happens.
If you are far away from L.A.,
that's okay, you can get all your Milk Bar faves
at milkbarstore.com, sending a care package.
- Send a care package to yourself is such a good play.
- That's strong move, we're here for you.
- We're here.
- We're out here.
- We will make it for you.
(laughing)
- Scotty's so, we will make it for you.
- We will make it.
(crew laughing)
- Error, we'll make it.
- Okay, don't put that in, do it again if you can.
(laughing)
- Okay, we're very genuine.
- [Scotty] We will make it for you.
- We will make it for you.
- [Scotty] We will make it for you.
(crew laughing)
(upbeat music)