Pecan Butter

A few days ago I told you about our experiment with almond butter.   It was so good, so easy and so flexible in recipes that we decided to try it with pecans.

Because we love pecans as much as we love almonds.

Plus, the almondbutter cookies were so incredible, we started thinking about pecanbutter cookies.  

So we dug out the pecans and went to work.

1.  Toast the pecans.    5-10 minutes at 250 in the oven is great.   Don't turn your back on them!  Pecans are full of oil and burn quickly.

2.  Put the warm pecans in your food processor and turn it on high.

3.  Grind it down until the nuts release the oils.   This only takes a few minutes for pecans, unlike the almonds which take for freaking ever.

Store the way you store peanut butter. 

Now here's a little recipe for you to try:  


Pecanbutter Cookies

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 pecan butter
• 1 cup sugar  [white or brown]
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• pinch salt

Cream butters and sugar.  Add everything else and mix well.   Drop by teaspoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet and bake 5 minutes at 350.   Don't let them brown - just bake them until they firm up a bit.  Pull them out and let them sit on the hot pan until they finish firming up.   It's ok to let them cool on the pan.    They'll stay soft on the inside, but have a bit of crunch on the outside.

You can also refrigerate the dough and roll it out, then cut it into rounds or shapes or whatever.

Yum.

Almond Butter

I was blog surfing a while back and passed a piece on making almond butter.   At the time, I thought 'cool', and moved on.    I can't even remember whose blog I saw it on.  

The idea stuck with me. 

And stuck with me.  

And I mentioned it to Eric, who said, 'We have almonds'.  

And I said, 'Let's try it!'

And we did.

And this is how we did it.

1.  Toast the nuts in a low oven.    Say 10-15 minutes at 250 degrees.  [Or more, or less, or not at all because there are no almond butter police.]

2.  Put the almonds warm in your food processor and turn it on.   High. 

3.  Get a manicure.  

4.  Read a magazine.

5.  Dust the living room.

6.  Check the almonds.    They'll go from crumbly to sort of wet and clumpy to really doughy.   I only scrape down the sides once to get the big crumbs back down into the butter.   Eventually, it'll sort of ball up around the blades.   That's good.    But you're not done yet.   Turn it back on high.

7.  Go weed the garden.

8.  Watch some Downton Abbey.

9.   Your food processor might heat up a little.   Or a lot.   Just keep it going until the nuts release the oil and the butter gets a sheen of oil on it.  Or until you can't stand it anymore.   Slightly chunkier almond butter is good, too.  

That's it!  You're done! 

You can probably skip steps #3, #4, #5, #7, and #8. 

Store the butter the way you store peanut butter.    Use it wherever you use peanut butter - like in Thai peanut almond sauce over noodles and beef.  Mmm-hmm.  

Or in peanutbutter almondbutter cookies.    With chocolate chips. 

Oh. Yes.