MasterChef at Home: Pete Campbell’s Peanut Butter Bread Really Is That Easy

I am a big fan of lazy baking — everything from no-knead bread, to overnight pudding, and 4-ingredient fruit cake. The fewer ingredients and the simpler the process, the more you’ve got me. So when lazy baking made it onto MasterChef in the form of peanut butter bread, it was an instant winner for me.

In the family-themed episode, the contestants had to each cook a dish that reminded them of their loved ones. Pete Campbell came up with a PB&J-inspired dessert in honour of his family’s time in the US. Burnt toast-flavoured ice cream, blueberry sauce and peanut butter bread. Say it with me: YUM!

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It was the peanut butter bread in particular that made me sit up with anticipation. And then Pete dropped how easy it is to make: 3 tablespoons of peanut butter, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 egg, mix it all together and pop it in the microwave for one-and-a-half minutes.

Now, you would think cooking in a microwave would make the MasterChef judges scoff. But no — they seemed intrigued by this peanut butter bread proposal. And so was I.

So, is it really that easy to make? Of course, I gave it a shot.

I made sure I had a big enough ceramic cup for starters — it could easily spill over in a regular mug. I used caster sugar, then tossed in no-added-sugar peanut butter (the fancy type that’s just the nuts, essentially), and dropped in an egg.

You have to keep mixing for a minute or two until the consistency changes. Smooth it out in the cup and pop it in the microwave for 90 seconds.

When the timer goes off, the top of the peanut butter bread looks a little unimpressive. But once you dig a spoon into it, you can see that bread-like texture.

It’s an intense peanut butter flavour. You definitely need some kind of jam to cut through it. I added strawberry jam on top, which worked a treat, but blueberry or raspberry jam would also work well.

We can call this a high-protein cake, right? Almost healthy? Let’s go with that.

You can test more MasterChef recipes at home, like Amir Manoly’s flat bread, or Maja Veit’s herb-loaded dipping oil, or go all out with Brent Draper’s potato hash baked eggs.