When I do buy peanut butter — and I don’t buy it that often, just occasionally — I tend to buy the “natural” kind, the kind that separates and has to be stirred together because it is not made with hydrogenated oil. This kind is supposed to be much more heart-healthy. (It also tends to be unsweetened.)

You can keep the natural peanut butter from separating — or so they tell you — by storing it in the fridge once you have stirred it well. But this isn’t a perfect solution — some of the oil does rise to the top half of the jar, and so when you get down to the bottom third or so of the jar you may be left with a dry, grainy peanut butter. Remember this; I will return to it in a second.

Desserts are generally not my weak point. There are some I enjoy, but if given a choice between seconds or dessert I am much more likely to go for the seconds. Tonight, however, I had a sweet tooth. Actually, what I wanted was chocolate, probably because of all the Valentine’s programming on Food Network and all the ads about buying chocolate for your valentine. I do like chocolate.

However, the only thing chocolate I had in the pantry was instant hot chocolate, and I wasn’t exactly in the mood for that. So I went rummaging. Not being a dessert-aholic, I am not that experienced at cooking desserts either, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I found the dry, crumbly remains of a jar of natural peanut butter, as described above; a small can of sweetened condensed milk; and I had eggs in the fridge (I don’t keep them all the time either, but I made cornbread for a potluck at work today.) I started thinking about something with the consistency of a pie filling. I had no pie crust, nor even any graham crackers, but I figured I could bake it in a pyrex dish and call it a custard of sorts.

I’m guessing there was somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of a cup of the crumbly peanut butter. I beat two eggs and combined them with the sweetened condensed milk, then added the peanut butter and a squirt or two of honey and hit it with the electric mixer. I poured it into a square baking dish which I’d sprayed with Pam, and I topped it with — if you can believe this — a dry packet of Quaker Supreme Apple, Raisin & Cinnamon oatmeal. I baked it at 350 degrees; the exact time was unrecorded, but it was basically just until the center set.

It’s not half bad. It would have been better in a crust — and I might have left out the honey or else used an unsweetened topping. But it’s not half bad, warm from the oven, and I suspect it will still taste pretty good cold tomorrow night when I get home from work.