YES, Pe Can

Crispy Pecan Spread from Hamburg

Brandgut YES, Pe Can is a crispy, vegan spread made from almost 50% roasted pecans with sugar, vanilla sugar and sea salt – handmade in a copper kettle in Hamburg-Ottensen, with no additives. One spoonful is enough, and your breakfast bread gets a caramel scent and a slight crunch.

Brandgut's pecan spread YES, Pe Can is a crispy bread spread made from roasted pecans, in a 160g jar from Hamburg-Ottensen. The name is a small pun – "Yes we can" meets pecan – and describes the spread quite accurately: strong, cheerful, with a wink. Besides the almost 50% pecans, only sugar, vanilla sugar, and a pinch of sea salt go into the jar. No palm fats, no emulsifiers, no lecithin, no industrial cocoa – just 4 good ingredients and a lot of handiwork.

Sweet, salty, with a crispy crunch

As soon as you open the jar, the warm caramel scent of the roasted pecans rises – a bit like being in front of a fairground stall in autumn, only finer. The cream has a milky coffee-brown color, slightly coarse-grained and not as smooth as industrial nougat creams. This is intentional: no emulsifier holds anything together here, so don't be alarmed if oil settles on the edge. Give it a good stir, and the cream will be shiny and creamy again.

On the tongue, the pecan spread is first soft and nutty, then comes the subtle sweetness, then the fine salty tip that holds everything together – sweet, salty, crunchy. At the bottom of the jar, the crunch collects: small caramelized nut pieces that give the spread its playful texture. Therefore, the simple rule applies: stir again and again so that liquid and crunch remain evenly distributed.

We love it straight from the spoon

The classic place for this pecan spread is on bread – a fresh white bread, brioche or a sourdough with a firm crust, thickly spread, with a strong coffee. But we also enjoy it thinly spread on farmhouse bread, and if you like, you can add a few flakes of sea salt – pecans can handle it.

We also like it as a sweet-and-savory cooking ingredient: a spoonful in a porridge bowl, a dollop on vanilla ice cream, a streak on crêpes with a drizzle of maple syrup. If you like baking, try it as a filling in a classic pound cake or as a topping on a dark chocolate cake – the caramelized depth of the roasted pecans is appealing. Our tip: "Yes, Pe Can" as an unexpected accompaniment to strong mountain cheese or a spicy blue cheese – sweetness and pecans play surprisingly well with salt and cheese.

And admittedly: It tastes most honest simply straight from the spoon, preferably after stirring, when the crunch from the bottom is still included. If you like more of the Brandgut range, you will also find something with the Hazelnut Delight, the Almond Delight or the Pistachio Cream Peacetazie.

Meike and Daniel, from advertising agency to creative kitchen

Behind Brandgut are Meike Grosch and Daniel Thaung from Hamburg. The two worked together in the creative team of a Hamburg advertising agency for almost 10 years, until they dared to venture into their own kitchen in 2014. The idea for the roasted nut spreads came, as they like to tell it, during a walk with a bag of roasted almonds at the Hamburg Dom fair – why not bring this warm fairground sweetness into a jar?

The idea turned into a small manufactory in Hamburg-Ottensen, from which all Brandgut creams are still made by hand today. The nuts are caramelized in a copper kettle with sugar, vanilla sugar and sea salt and then processed into a fine, crispy cream. Everything vegan, everything without additives, everything handmade. Meike and Daniel themselves call their work "brandgut" – which translates to something like "brand good" – and wish everyone "brandguten Appetit" (a "brand good" appetite). You can find more nutty spreads in our Brandgut collection. All credit to these two.