Expensive almond and peanut butters are a weekly staple for many health-conscious shoppers but did you know how easy it is to make your own?
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a commercial nut butter machine to grind your own - all you need is a high strength food processor or blender and a little bit of patience.
Homemade nut butters are a staple in my household for topping smoothie bowls, adding to creamy sauces, spreading on toast and of course eating straight from the jar.
I usually make a batch of nut butter on weekends to use throughout the week and I vary the nuts and seeds that I use as the base.
Feel free to experiment with your own combinations of nuts and seeds in your butters as well as raw versus roasted nuts.
I generally find that most nut butters taste best when the nuts have been roasted, however to save time you may want to try some raw combinations.
One of my all time favourite combinations is cashew-pepita-sunflower seed butter.
This perfect mix is heavenly as a savoury or sweet spread and is a nice change to regular almond or peanut butter.
For this nut butter I always roast the nuts first and then allow them to cool a little as I find this really enhances the flavour.
When you are blending your nuts, you will inevitably have a period of “This is never going to turn into nut butter?!
It just looks like ground nuts?!” but bare with me, within a matter of seconds the oils will suddenly be released, and just like that, your blender will be full of rich, creamy nut butter.
All you need is a little faith that those nuts will eventually do their thing.
Enjoy the satisfaction of homemade nut butter and get creative with different combinations of nuts and seeds. Let me know in the comments below if you discover any winning combinations!