Nut Butters

You can make your own yummy nut butter from whatever crunchy, delicious nuts you like. Some people use raw nuts, but I like mine roasted.

Oh the possibilities! Almonds, walnuts, cashews, pecans, sunflower seed and of course peanuts make wonderful nut butters.

If you buy the nuts pre salted they might be a bit too salty, so use your own judgment. Also, you can decide how smooth you want your butters. Smooth with a few crunchy bits thrown in near the end of processing is what I like. All nuts have great oil content but need a little more to make them truly spreadable. You can add a bit of olive oil, flax seed oil or canola. Only add what it needs.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love sunflower seed, so I recently made sun butter.

Here are some nice recipes to use your nut butters in at Cooking Light. You can also do a Google search for cooking with nut butters. You could try making a chocolate nut butter with a little cocoa, or melted dark chocolate. If you use cocoa you may need a little sweetener of some kind.

Nut Butter

• 2 cups of unsalted nuts or seeds of your choice
• 1/4 tsp. salt (to taste)
  
• 2-4 Tb. oil

Place your nuts and salt into a food processor or grinding stone. :) Process the nuts/seeds until chopped finely. Some will start to release oil and turn to a dry paste. Add oil a little at a time until the butter is the consistency you'd like it to be. Store in the fridge. Simple, huh?