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Sunday, July 8, 2012

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.