Into the thick of things - Hazelnut Butter

I wanted to keep up with making my own nut butters, mainly to keep the jars full, but also to try other nuts to see how they turn out. Probably my absolute favourite nut butter has always been hazelnut, I love the taste of them and use these nuts anytime I can.

To make any of these nut butters is fairly straight forward and hazelnut butter is even easier than the others it turns out! This nut butter is so easy everyone should be making it - it is also nearly the most expensive in the health food shops, so there is another good reason to try making this at home.

The hazelnuts must first be roasted to remove the skins - to do this put them in the oven at 180 degrees for about 10 minutes or so. Then once out, transfer the hot hazelnuts to a rough tea towel (we did this before for making halva) using the tea towel rub them between your hands to get the skins to loosen off.

This method will remove most of the skins. The rest can be pulled off with your fingers if you are very picky about having some skins on. 

Hazel nuts in blender 

Then pour 1 cup of the roasted nuts into a glass blender ( I don't use plastic around food). Have a wooden spoon or scraper handy and turn on the machine, this only takes a couple of minutes and you will have nut butter very quickly.

Hazelnuts just before they turn to butter

These nuts are soft, very oily, then turn to dusty mush and then butter in about 2 or 3 minutes. Any other blending is just to make sure you have all the nut dust mixed in as well. 

Hazelnut butter in blender 

The hardest part was getting all the butter out of the bottom of the blender! Luckily it was runny enough to mostly pour out into the jars. I made two batches of nut butter, but could easily have made it with one.

This nut butter smells delicious and I can't wait to try it, after my cleanse. 

Have a healthy day,

April

Hazelnut butter in jar - Looks and smells great! 

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