What Is a Nutter Butter?

If there’s a cookie hall of fame, it’s got to be huge. There’s so many delicious cookies out there. And standing at the end of the hall, in a special place, there would be that one cookie that took the homemade deliciousness of a plain peanut butter cookie and fancied it up with an unforgettable design: the Nutter Butter cookie. But what is a Nutter Butter? Who makes Nutter Butter cookies? And what kind of peanut butter does Nutter Butter use? We’re going to answer one question after another as we find out about Nutter Butter cookies.

What is a Nutter Butter?

Nutter Butters are a delicious, American made, sandwich cookie made with two sugar wafers shaped like peanuts and filled with “real peanut butter” filling. (Although they weren’t always shaped like peanuts! They used to be little connected square, peanut butter-filled cookies in a grid—almost like tiny raviolis.) As Nutter Butter says on the packaging, they are a “peanut butter lovers’ cookie.”

Who makes Nutter Butter cookies?

Nutter Butter is made by Nabisco, whose parent company is Mondelez International. But there’s a bit of a mystery as to who exactly we can thank for Nutter Butters. We began to see peanut butter cookies pop up around 1910. There were several peanut cookie recipes in George Washington Carver’s tastily titled book, How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption. But the Nutter Butter is not just any old peanut butter cookie. This special little peanut butter sandwich was invented in 1969. Former Nabisco design engineer William Turnier is credited with creating the waffle pattern on the cookie. But according to Nabisco, it was more of a team effort.

Everyone that’s not a peanut butter hating maniac can agree that these cookies are delicious. But what are the Nutter Butter ingredients? Of course there’s peanut butter, that’s a given. But what peanut butter does Nutter Butter use? Nabisco says that Nutter Butter uses real peanut butter. Nabisco’s Nutter Butter peanut butter contains hydrogenated vegetable oil and high fructose corn syrup. The wafer part of the cookie has flour, leavening, and sugar (9 grams per two-cookie serving).

Are Nutter Butters vegan?

One thing that Nutter Butter does not contain is animal products, so classic Nutter Butters are vegan friendly. But there are a few varieties of Nutter Butter out there, and the fudge dipped Nutter Butters are not vegan as they contain dairy.

Nutter Butters used to be the go-to cookie for blood donation. The American Red Cross would give Nutter Butter cookies to all donors. In the 1990s Red Cross stopped offering them because of budget constraints and people freaked out. Finally, Nabisco began donating Nutter Butters to blood donation centers. That’s how I buy all my Nutter Butters! I alway donate blood, then ask for a Nutter, then a nutter and a nutter.