Happy Monday everyone! Hope you all enjoyed Nick’s post. I was very surprised, and of course, can’t think of a better way to get a ring than on top of chocolate! Looks like my cooking and baking won’t be slowing down any time soon.
This weekend I had a project I wanted to try. I LOVE peanut butter, and since my love is so great, I’ve also branched out to try other nut butters, like almond butter and cashew butter. My love for these is up there too, but my love for their price is not. A jar of Smuckers Natural peanut butter is approximately $2. An equal sized jar of any all natural almond butter is closer to $10! So, since I’ve been known to be super cheap, almond butter doesn’t find its way into my shopping cart very often.
However, I found a solution! I’ve seen lots and lots of recipes for making your own almond butter and I decided to give it a try.
Cinnamon Vanilla Almond Butter
- 2 cups unsalted raw almonds
- 1 tbsp cinnamon
- 1.5 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp honey
- 1 tsp peanut (or other light) oil
I started by dumping the almonds into the food processor.
I processed the almonds about 2 minutes, until they were fine crumbs.
Then I added the vanilla and cinnamon and continued processing.
Up until this point, I wasn’t planning on adding anything else, but it had been almost 10 minutes of processing, and I was losing faith that the butter would ever come together. All of the recipes I looked at claimed it would magically happen, but I wasn’t buying it. So I added a drizzle each of honey and peanut oil in the hopes of bringing the crumbs together. Processed a few more minutes…
At this point, I was convinced this was going to be a big Cinnamon Vanilla Fail, but it looked like SOME almond butter was forming on the sides, so I kept going.
After about 15 minutes total processing, the food processor was quite warm, and while I never got the “soupy” consistency that most recipes claimed I would, I did get a big lumpy ball of almond “butter,” if you can call it that. I decided to spare the motor on my food processor, and give up.
I stuffed the almond butter into a jar, with the hopes that my Cinnamon Vanilla Fail might actually still be edible, even if it only ended up in Kaiser’s bowl.
I decided to try it out smeared on a cracker. And you know what? It was really good! It was a bit dry and crumbly, so it was hard to spread, but the flavor was great! I’m not sure why the almond butter never got to a smooth consistency. Next time I might try roasting the almonds first. Even though it’s not very spreadable, this almond butter will be good plopped on top of some oatmeal!
This recipe was somewhat of a fail. It didn’t come out exactly as I was expecting, but the end result was still delicious, and that’s what counts, right? I’m considering this a Cinnamon Vanilla Success afterall.
I love almonds and that sounds really yummy. My first thought is that maybe you should have blanched the almonds for a smoother texture.
Looks yummy! Did you get a new camera? Your photos look great in this post!
Nope… normally I make stuff at night… I made this during the day on the weekend… amazing what natural light can do!
Almonds are less oily than peanuts so you have to add some in to get that smooth texture. I find a lot of blogs are not posting the proper techniques and neglect to mention they too have to add oil.. hence your frustration.
It is a bit frustrating, especially the first time making homemade almond butter, but from the pictures you look SO close! Just another 2 minutes or so and it’d be more creamy, stick together and be spreadable. I’ve noticed that if I roast the almonds prior the food processor time gets cut in half! It tastes a bit sweeter in my opinion too. My fiance suggested adding cinnamon the first time he tried some and I make it that way every time since! I’m interested in adding some vanilla extract next time. Thanks for the suggestion!!