Sunflower seed butter

Today I really wanted to try my hand at making some sunflower seed butter - this has been a favourite around here and it has the side benefit of being lighter, lower in fat and very tasty. However, once I did some research, I found it was a little trickier to make then the nut butters...

Sunflower seeds seem to be more delicate all around and very different to work with from nuts. First of all they are tiny, dryer and lighter, but this also makes them less easily made into a butter. At least not without some additional help.

To make sun flower seed butter the first thing I wanted to do was to roast them - I found mention in several places to not do that, but instead gently toast the seeds in a hot pan over heat while stirring constantly. 

This only takes a few minutes to turn them slightly brown and fragrant. Otherwise, they will get dry and as they are already fairly dry, you don't want them any dryer. I waited until some of them (but not all) were golden in colour and appeared to be slightly tinged, then I turned off the heat.

toasted sunflower seeds

Because this was my first attempt at making the sunflower seed butter, I decided to try out two ways to test the results. So, for the first batch, I poured 1 cup of seeds into the blender, with nothing else and just pulsed it until they finally started to clump together into a sort of butter.

They take far longer then the nuts for this to happen. Once the clumping, thickening process started I added 1 tablespoon or honey and after another minute or so, I added 1 tablespoon of olive oil. For the life of me, I am not sure why I used olive oil - I have sunflower seed oil here and perhaps this would have been better.

Then I pulsed the mixture a little more - and it sort of looks like a butter. I am fasting today, so will taste it in the morning.

Sunflower seed butter - less oil

For the other cup of seeds, I wanted to try something completely different, so I put them into the machine together with the oil and honey only this time I doubled the amount. They came out completely different from the first batch. 

Sunflower seed butter - more oil and honey

However, both batches smelled wonderful with that roasted nutty smell, while the second one also smells slightly of honey. In the morning, there will be a taste test to see which one we prefer or back to the drawing board to do something else with the seeds.

It is so easy, tasty and convenient to make your own, there really is no excuse! Also, I love it when I can tweak the recipe, add or subtract things and generally make it my own creation in the end. 

Well, that's me at the moment - dreaming up things in the kitchen!

Have a healthy day,

April