Homemade Gingerbread Almond Butter

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Hannah

Hey you! Yes, you, out there, behind the screen.

You’re magnificent.

And by that, of course, I mean that you are extremely wonderful. Tremendously fabulous.

Your responses to my last post? Incredible. Thank you. For your understanding, and your kindness. For reading, and for being you.

I’ve had a lovely past few days filled with friendship, laughter, heart-strengthening words, cooking adventures, more friendship, and more laughter. I’ve switched back from feeling like sobs are hiding in my chest to sneaking skips on the sidewalk again.

I’m very lucky to have people nestled so deeply in my heart, both here in North America and Australia (as well as a sprinkling of other continents, too).

Soul-friendships are magnificent. And by that, of course, I mean extremely wonderful.

The third magnificent and extremely wonderful thing in today’s post is this homemade gingerbread almond butter, which is almost as delicious, almost as uplifting, almost as rich and complex, almost as addictive and almost as wildly glorious as the act of living itself.

Roasted almonds are turned into a thick yet silky nut butter kissed with the dark intensity of blackstrap molasses, dazzled with a hint of smoky-caramel coconut sugar, deepened with heady spices, and rounded out with a little vanilla and sea salt.

It’s impossible to stop at one spoonful of this spiced almond butter. It’s not too sweet, yet it sings with the same joy that dessert brings. Equally at home on toast, a carrot, coconut ice cream, or simply your lips, I think you’ll want to make this soon.

Because it’s almost as wonderful as you are.

Homemade Gingerbread Almond Butter

Makes a small jar’s worth; around a cup of almond butter
Original recipe

1 1/2 cups (180g/6.5oz) raw almonds
2 tsp blackstrap molasses
1 tsp coconut sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
pinch salt

Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and roast almonds on a lined baking tray for 8 minutes. Cool almonds for 5 minutes.
Tip almonds into your beloved food processor and process until the almonds have gone through the fine meal stage, the crumbly stage, and the clumped-into-a-ball stage, finally reaching the smoothed-into-drippy-almond-butter stage. Depending on the strength of your food processor, this can take anywhere from 8-15 minutes (My food processor is a whiz at nut butters, so it took a mere 7 minutes, but in Australia it would have easily taken 15.) You will need to stop the processor and scrape down the nuts from the sides every few minutes.
Add the molasses, sugar, spices, and salt, and then resume processing. The nut butter will initially jump back from smooth to clumpy, but after another 5-10 minutes will once more reach the lusciously smooth stage.
Eat. Revel. Love. Dance in joy. Always.

Submitted to Ricki’s Wellness Weekend, Healthy Vegan Friday, and Allergy-Friendly Lunchbox Love.

Cashew, Fig and Molasses Nut Butter

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Hannah

This is one of those posts where I need you to look at me (figuratively speaking), and not the photos. While I am somewhat bombarding you with a fair number of images showcasing today’s recipe, I’m also aware of the fact that this recipe doesn’t translate well on screen.

It’s like how Pride and Prejudice is a wonderful piece of literature on the page but, once thrown onto a movie screen with Keira Knightley in the lead role, all the beauty, subtlety, and satire of Jane Austen’s words are torn asunder in favour of a giggly idiocy.

Except that what we have here isn’t a work of literature but a work of deliciousness; today’s recipe is a homemade nut butter that, in photos, looks humdrum-bordering-on-icky, and yet in reality is one of the most complex, rich, full-flavoured, gorgeous, and addictive treats I’ve yet conjured up.

I can pinpoint two areas of inspiration for this Sultry Cashew Fig Nut Butter. The first inspiration is quite general, encompassing the fun I’ve had making maple macadamia butter and walnut coconut butter. The second inspiration is more specific. Do you remember my absolute favourite homemade granola recipe, my Tall Dark and Handsome Molasses Fig Granola?

Well, yesterday I decided to take that granola and rework it into a nut butter.

Reader, I married the flavours.

After all, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single girl in possession of a spoon must be in want of a nut butter.

And lo! What a nut butter this is. Roasted cashews, dried figs, molasses, roasted sesame oil, cinnamon… just try and tell me you don’t want an entire jar to yourself right now.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a spoon to attend to.

Homemade Cashew, Fig, and Molasses Nut Butter Oh Yes Indeedy

1 1/2 cups cashews
1 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp blackstrap molasses
1/3 cup dried figs
pinch of sea salt, chopped
olive oil, as needed

1. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F). Spread cashews on a baking tray and roast for 6-8 minutes. When I pulled mine out of the oven, some of the cashews were deeply browned (read: near burnt) and some looked as raw as the day they were born. Dear oven: you are ornery.

2. Tip the cashews into a food processor and process (stopping the machine to scrape the bowl if the ground cashews stick to the sides), until the nuts start to become buttery. Add the sesame oil fairly early on, as this will help the nuts butterize (I like that word, even if it isn’t real).

3. Add the dried figs, cinnamon, molasses, and salt. Continue processing, scraping the sides periodically. Add in extra oil as needed, until your nut butter reaches the consistency of your liking. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy, forever and ever until you want to marry it amen.

Note: I’ve seen other bloggers achieve an ultra smooth and “drippy” consistency when making nut butter, so I know it’s possible. However, this nut butter of mine never reached such a state, and while I quite like having a deeply rich, more-solid-than-liquid, scoopable nut butter, I do have a few theories as to why mine never become super creamy:

1. The food processor I used wasn’t very powerful.
2. The ratio of fruit to nuts might have been too high for the butteriness of the nuts to conquer the solidity of the fruit. Soaking the figs, or adding fewer figs, might help. But who wants to add fewer figs?
3. I could have processed the nut butter for longer, but ultimately it came down to a decision between staying in my kitchen with the nut butter or leaving for my coffee date with a friend. The friend won.
4. The nut butter consistency gods weren’t on my side. However, the nut butter tastiness gods were, and so I shan’t complain. Because, ultimately, this nut butter was the best of times, and it was the best of times*.

*Three paraphrased classic novel quotes in one post! I’m on a roll.

Cookbook Challenge Citrus: Raw Vegan Nacho Cheeze

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Hannah

Theme: Citrus
Recipe: Nacho Cheeze
Book: Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen

Look, I know what you’re thinking.

“Nacho Cheeze? How does this fit into a Citrus theme? I smell deception and lies! Deception and lies!”

Wait, no. That’s not quite right. This is probably what you’re thinking:

“Raw vegan Nacho Cheeze? Cheese with a Z? Cheese that is neither dairy nor heated? What the what? I smell deception and lies! Deception and lies!”

Of course, I’m sure there’s also a few of you who are simply thinking this:

“Raw vegan Nacho Cheeze? Bring. It. On.”

Let’s address the second issue first. Raw vegan Nacho Cheeze… what be it? How goes it? Wherefore art it?

Behold! Macadamias, lemon juice, tamari (or nama shoyu), turmeric, and cayenne. All the ingredients for cheese, right? Exactly! Cheese! Cheese-y cheese!

Some of you still aren’t with me, I can tell.

It’d be wrong of me to tell you that this tastes exactly like cheese, or like nacho cheese. Heck, I don’t even know what real “nacho cheese” is, let alone tastes like. But I can tell you that there really is something cheese-like about the flavour of this dip/spread/sauce and that, more importantly, it’s highly addictive.

The reason I picked this recipe for the Citrus week of the Cookbook Challenge is that the lemon juice is integral to recreating the cheese-ish flavour. The lemon is what provides the tang reminiscent of real cheese. The turmeric and cayenne provide colour and flavour, and the macadamias are just… divine.

Last night, I ate half the batch. There’s nothing wrong with eating 100g of macadamias in the space of a few hours, right? Not when you’ve also eaten two sunflower butter and jam sandwiches, and some smoked almonds too, right?

Nuts = happy, right?

‘Specially when the nuts are in the form of a creamy, spicy, tangy, nuanced, creamy, rich raw Nacho Cheeze, right?

Right?

Raw Vegan Nacho Cheeze from Spicy Spicy Amazingtown

From Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen
See others’ Cookbook Challenge recipes, or sign up yourself, here

2 cups (240g) macadamias
1/4 cup (60ml) fresh lemon juice
1 tb (15ml) tamari (use Nama Shoyu or Bragg Liquid Aminos to be completely raw)
1 tb (15ml) turmeric
1 – 2 tsps cayenne, to taste (if you’re sensitive to heat, be careful with the cayenne. I used about 1 1/2 tsp and the cheese has serious, serious heat. I adore spice, so I don’t mind the burning sensation, but you might want to err on the side of caution)
1 cup water, as needed (I used about 3/4 of this to reach a dip-like consistency, but you could use more if you’d like it more saucy.)

1. Process nuts, lemon juice, tamari (or other option), turmeric, and cayenne and slowly add just enough water for your desired consistency.

2. Serve as a dip, as a raw pasta sauce over raw zucchini pasta, as a body mask that will give you a lovely yellow jaundice-esque tan, or as something that you get caught eating with a spoon in the middle of the night*.

*Not Ani Phyo’s directions. Just so you know.

Maple Macadamia Butter of Goodliness

Posted on December 7, 2010 by Hannah

I’m back from my whirlwind Magnificent Melbourne Holiday Weekend. (Yes, that sound you hear is me sighing dramatically in a woebegone fashion.) I have decided to let my other Melbourne adventures and memories percolate for a day or so, but rest assured I’ll be reliving Melbourne here on this blog in coming weeks.

Also, I simply had to interrupt the Melbourne stories to share something I made before my holiday with you. Behold!

I know, I know. This doesn’t look like much. In fact, it looks a bit like dry hummus, and hummus doesn’t often necessitate “Behold!” as an introduction.

It’s not hummus, though. It’s so much better than that. Those of you who read in a linear fashion would already know what this is, because I kinda gave the game away in the post’s title.

But for those of you who read in more of a wiggly-wiggly fashion…. Behold! Homemade Maple Macadamia Butter!

This stuff is the shiz. I’m sure you all know about my addiction to peanut butter, as I mention that glorious substance here on a regular basis. What you may not know is that I equally love all nut butters, but a) Australia doesn’t provide access to a wide variety of non-peanut nut butters, and b) nuts are expensive, and I am a PhD student.

So when my mother offered me 500g of fresh macadamias, I cast away my inner picky “macadamias are one of my least favourite nuts” child and hastily grabbed the bag close to my heart. I knew straightaway that I would be using the macadamias to make, for the first time in my life, homemade nut butter.

Hot diggity dog, this stuff is the shiz. Did I say that already? To make this, all I did was give the macadamias a quick roast in the oven (you could easily skip this step if you prefer your nut butters raw), and then throw them in the food processor for some blenderising (shhh, spellcheck. I’m pretending that’s a real word).

I can’t give you an exact time for how long this takes to come together, but I’d estimate mine took about 4 minutes, though if you like your nut butters super smooth you could do it for longer.

I then added a pinch of salt and only a smidgen of maple syrup, as with this first batch I wanted the flavour to be all about the macadamias. If you want this to be a “true” flavoured nut butter, you’ll want to up the amount of maple syrup. I, however, was aiming for the rich, creamy, buttery flavour of macadamias to hold centre court.

It worked. The maple functions as a background note of sweetness ramping up the natural richness of the macadamias, and you know what the bonus of this is? The simple, natural, just-a-touch-of-complexity flavour of this nut butter makes it taste heavenly on top of some Lindt 85% dark chocolate. Behold!

Maple Macadamia Butter of Goodliness

2 cups (200g/7oz) raw macadamias, preferably generously given to you for free by your mother.
pinch of salt (yes, I’m going to snobbishly say “a flaky, delicate sea salt” here but, really, use whatever you have on hand)
2 tsp maple syrup (the real stuff), or more to taste for a stronger flavour

Preheat oven to 180°C (360°F) and roast macadamias on a baking tray for about 10 minutes. Remove from oven, and let cool.
Place macadamias in a food processor and process at a med-high level for about 4-5 minutes, until the nut butter has reached your desired consistency.
Add the pinch of salt and maple syrup, and process again briefly so that the flavours meld.
Normally I’d dare you to try resisting eating a third of this straightaway with a spoon, but it really is super rich. The nut butter is quite soft when you first make it, but firms up in the refrigerator and keeps for what I’d assume is a long time. I’ve been eating mine too quickly to be able to tell you quite how long it will last for…

Question Time: This is a rather self-serving question, to be honest. *ahem* What flavours would you put with a homemade macadamia butter if, say, you hypothetically had 300g of macadamias left in your cupboard?

Wayfaring Chocolate

adventures in chocolate, travel, cooking, and living

Category Archives: Condiments

Homemade Gingerbread Almond Butter

Homemade Gingerbread Almond Butter

Cashew, Fig and Molasses Nut Butter

Homemade Cashew, Fig, and Molasses Nut Butter Oh Yes Indeedy

Cookbook Challenge Citrus: Raw Vegan Nacho Cheeze

Raw Vegan Nacho Cheeze from Spicy Spicy Amazingtown

Maple Macadamia Butter of Goodliness

Maple Macadamia Butter of Goodliness