Lauren showed me a pen right before Valentine’s day. “Look mom, it says ‘Buckeyes’”.

Once I got past my initial panic that she was turning into a college basketball fan, I asked her where she’d gotten the pen. Apparently it was a gift from school. Some caring soul had brought Buckeyes into the classroom, and while her classmates snacked on treats, she and the two other nut-free kids sat in a corner and played with their new pens.

Fortunately she wasn’t traumatized, but she seemed to be genuinely curious about these mystery cookies that she’ll never be able to sample.

“Girl, I’ll make you a nut free Buckeye” I said as I started to dig around online for a similar recipe without peanut butter.

The problem is that she’s also allergic to Sunbutter, the sunflower seed butter that most recipes use as a substitute.

I was just about to call it a day, when I came across a recipe from The Spatularette that used Biscoff spread, a cookie-based butter, in place of the peanut butter.

I hadn’t heard of cookie butter until recently. But all of a sudden it was an in product, causing near-stampedes at Trader Joe’s over the holidays.

With this country’s fixation on all things cookie dough, I’d jumped to the erroneous conclusion that it was some kind of peanut butter studded with cookie dough. Sounds horrible and gag-inducing, but I wouldn’t put it past some people. If you need further proof, I give you the cookie dough martini.

So I’d turned a blind eye to cookie butter. I hadn’t given it a second thought until confronted with the Buckeye challenge.

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