Oh spreads, I can’t wait to get you home. I’ve been covering the butter beat here at the Sprudge Media Network for as long as I can remember. If there’s a Japanese coffee margarine spread, I’m all over it. If there’s an artisanal nut butterist making an Intelligentsia Coffee Black Cat Espresso peanut butter, you’ll hear it here first. So you can imagine my surprise—nay nay my joy—when I stumbled upon a panoply of spreadables at the London Coffee Festival this weekend.
Butters, spreads, curds, nut butters, the options were endless and endlessly delicious. I of course had to sample them all numerous times; it comes with the job. Here are all the wondrous things at the London Coffee Festival you can put on toast.
Pip & Nut Nut Butters
Pip & Nut is a London-based artisanal nut butterist who offers hand crafted nut-based spreads that rely on the elegance of its few simple ingredients. It’s pretty straight ahead offering; no coffee infusions or cascara jelly swirls going on (but now that I think about it, a cascara jelly is long overdue), but they still come in a variety of flavors like: crunchy maple peanut, honey cinnamon cashew, and coconut almond. I was a frequenter of the Pip & Nut booth because of all the free samples and the no shame attitude of the lovely attendants when I was cramming the eighth peanut butter rice cake down my gullet.
Flat Brew Coffee Spread
Have you ever been smearing some Nutella on a nice hearty slice of sourdough and thought, “I wish there was coffee in this?” If so, then I’d like to introduce you to Flat Brew Coffee Spread. Containing the equivalent to a shot of espresso in every nine gram serving, Flat Brew only contains four ingredients: coffee, cocoa butter, sugar, and cream. The taste and texture is something like a coffeed out version of Nutella, making it a perfect dessert-like spread.
Jake’s Cinnamon Curd
This was an unexpected little treat. Admittedly I’ve never had a curd before, but can this cinnamon curd from Jake’s ever spread on toast. It’s been described as a spreadable version of a Danish pastry, and it’s pretty hard to argue with the assessment. Jake’s is a London-based company, so their various spreads are primarily available at UK stockists, but I’m certain they could be ordered internationally were one willing to pay more for shipping than for the product itself.
Jackpot Motherfucking Peanut Butter
The English brand Jackpot is not your mum’s peanut butter, what with the cursing. What I can only assume is the world’s first “motherfucking peanut butter” has definitely taking some branding cues from American institutions, Bazooka Bubble Gum and Toy Machine Skateboards in particular. They do offer motherfucking-less and MF scratch-off options for the less crass and the crass-curious.
Coffee Butter from Grind
Inside London Coffee Festival, England’s Grind—a cafe and cocktail bar with a handful of locations around London—was offering up a three-course coffee dinner (more on that late this week). As a little intermezzo between courses one and two, guests were treated to fresh baked sourdough rolls and butter infused with Rwandan coffee grounds. This one made just for the coffee dinner, so it isn’t available anywhere else, but it’s probably something you could make at home should you want to recreate the experience.
Lotus Biscoff Spread
I know Lotus isn’t exactly an artisanal butterist, but they hold a special place in my jet-setting heart. At the risk of sounding like I’m in the pockets of Big Butter, I love Biscoff. No matter how bad the coffee is on a flight (and it’s always bad), there’s always a Biscoff cookie there to cleanse your palate.
And Lotus has now taken that same flavor and turned it into a spread. Let me reiterate—you can spread your Biscoff on your Biscoff. It’s maximum Biscoffity.
If you think I’m not stowing away a few of these in carry-on to help ease my Transatlantic flight home, then you don’t know me, your favorite butter beat reporter on the Sprudge Media Network.
Zac Cadwalader is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and butt nutter enthusiast.
