'Crack in a jar'

By Tom Harte

One of my favorite cookbooks contains pages of original cookie recipes interspersed with photographs of vintage cookie jars from the Andy Warhol collection.

Besides providing recipes, the volume serves as a reminder that someone like me, who considers a cookie in each hand a balanced diet, has to be careful about getting caught with those hands in the cookie jar.

These days, however, there's little danger of that because lately my cookie jar of choice is not the classic highly decorated ceramic version, but a much simpler jar: a jar of cookie butter.

It's hard to get your hand into a jar of cookie butter, but you can easily get a spoon into one.

Cookie butter, a contemporary take on a centuries-old treat, is nothing more -- or less -- than spreadable cookies.TOM HARTE

Consequently, so-called cookie butter has become all the rage, threatening to displace Nutella and perhaps even peanut butter as America's favorite spread.

No wonder cookie butter's fame is spreading. It's nothing more -- or less -- than spreadable cookies.

Basically it's a food paste made from cookie crumbs and a binder such as vegetable oil, condensed milk or actual butter.

The result is addictive, causing some wags to dub cookie butter "crack in a jar."

The evolution of cookie butter is a process that goes back centuries, to speculoos cookies, the kind of cookie from which cookie butter almost always is made.

Homemade cookie butter starts with cookie crumbs, shown here about to be finely processed before being combined with other ingredients.TOM HARTE

Dating back at least as far as the 17th century, speculoos cookies are thin and crispy spice cookies with an embossed design, often depicting St. Nicholas, as the cookies are a popular holiday treat all over Europe, particularly in Belgium and in the Netherlands, where they likely were invented.

Even when it's not holiday time, however, the cookies -- minus the holiday themes -- are ubiquitous at cafes in Europe. Order coffee at just about any place there and you are inevitably given with it a little speculoos cookie wrapped in paper or cellophane.

It was just this sort of cookie that captivated an airline food broker while at a convention in Europe. He was bent on getting them to the U.S. and got Delta Air Lines to agree to serve them, renamed Biscoff (an amalgamation of biscuit and coffee), during their in-flight beverage service. They were such a hit with passengers that they ultimately broke into the U.S. market.

However, it would take Els Scheppers, a contestant on a Belgian reality show, to dream up the idea of producing cookie butter. Nostalgic for the days when parents would give their kids sandwiches made of bread, butter and crushed cookies, she recalled how, if left to sit long enough, the crumbs and butter would turn into a deliciously smooth filling -- primitive cookie butter. She suggested the stuff be mass produced and sold in jars and, as they say, the rest is history.

Today you can get a jar of cookie butter just about anywhere, and besides eating it with a spoon, there are lots of ways you can use it to tasty advantage: in ice cream, milkshakes, muffins, cheesecakes, cream pies or as the secret ingredient in the ultimate snickerdoodle.

Jars of house-brand cookie butter line the shelves at Trader Joe s, but they won t stay there long. The product has become one of the top sellers for the California based specialty grocery chain.TOM HARTE

And even though cookie butter is easy to find at the grocery store, consider making your own. You can use any cookie you like, as long as it crumbles (forget Fig Newtons), to make flavors not available commercially. Try chocolate chips, pecan sandies, sugar cookies, graham crackers, shortbread and my favorite, gingersnaps. Avoid the understandable temptation to use Oreos. They just don't produce a creamy product. But, of course, that doesn't mean you can't eat them with one hand while dipping a spoon into the cookie butter jar with the other.

Homemade Cookie Butter

This recipe, adapted from Tessa Arias' "Handle the Heat" food blog, uses sweetened condensed milk rather than vegetable oil for a creamier and richer result.

• 25 cookies
• 1/2 stick butter
• 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
• 1/4 cup evaporated milk

Pulverize cookies in a food processor or blender. You should have 2 cups' worth. Over medium heat, stir together butter, condensed milk and evaporated milk until melted and combined. Stir about 1/2 cup of melted mixture into cookie crumbs. Gradually add more of the melted mixture to the crumbs until just moist enough to hold together. Store in the refrigerator. Serve at room temperature.