Homemade Almond Butter

Today's post is all about easy, homemade, healthy fun!

I have been wanting to make my own almond butter for the longest time and I finally did it last week.  Well, let me rephrase that and incorporate some more truth into that statement...I have actually TRIED to make my own nut butter a few times, but I thought I was being smart by using a small food processor on one occasion and a blender on the other occasion.  Let me help you here by saying that if you want to be successful at making your own nut butter, pull out your regular old food processor and save yourself some time.  You need the room within the larger food processor for the crunched up nuts to move around.  All I ended up with when I used the smaller tools was crushed nuts...like the kind you could sprinkle on some ice cream...there was no butteryness to it.

Now, I have to say, when I finally made it using the right tool, it was as easy as pie.  The money I will be saving from this point forward makes me so happy.  I mean, come on, a jar of GOOD almond butter runs upwards of $6-$10 and some of those jars are super tiny.  AND many of them have extra ingredients in them that are not even necessary.  Why do we need evaporated cane juice or other added oils in there??  There should only be ONE ingredient in any kind of nut butter...the nut itself...and maybe a little salt.  As in, peanuts in peanut butter, almonds in almond butter...you get me?

So, I grabbed a bag of roasted unsalted almonds and I got to work.

Ingredients:

Um...almonds...about 4 cups to make roughly one cup of almond butter.  Be sure NOT to buy salted almonds or peanuts, they are WAY too salty for the end product.  You can sprinkle a little in during the buttermaking process; I'd say about 1tsp.

If you can't have almonds for some reason, you can make any type of nut butter that you like:  peanut, cashew, walnut, pecan, etc.

Preparation:
Place the almonds in your food processor.

Turn your processor on using either the first level or second level.  No need for pulsing.

Now, just let the food processor do it's thang.  Be patient, it doesn't happen right away, but it does happen.

This is what it looks like when you first start it...kind of like nut powder.  Each time you check on it, give the sides a little scrape and stir a little bit:

Then, the change starts to happen...it starts to break down as the oils in the nuts start to  come out and that's what starts to help with the mixing:

And here you see it's really coming together and almost done.  I'd say it takes about 6-7 minutes to get to this point:



There you have it!  Your own homemade almond butter!

Store it in an airtight container in your fridge.  I don't know the shelf life, but I did a quick Google search and it looks like up to 3 months...that's if it lasts that long!

Some additional things you could mix in with the butter to make it even more fun:  honey, cinnamon, vanilla, or anything you'd like!

Nutrition:
Serving size = 2T
Calories 180 / Carbs 4g / Fat 16g / Protein 6g / Fiber 3g / Sodium 60mg