It's Sunday, Sunday, I love Sunday's so much!
A day dedicated to... NOTHING. And sometimes that just what a girl needs!
I'm not going to lie. Days upon days of nothing planned, doing nothing, being bored- that drives me insane. But the once in a while day to relax- oh yeh!
That's not the only thing making me smile from ear to ear today though. Oh no! What do you get when you pulverize the living daylights out of a food that is technically considered a fruit, composed of a hard shell and a seed, that we more commonly know as nuts, to a smooth, creamy, spreadable consistency? You get excellence. Impeccable, exquisite, faultless excellence. Or in other words, nut butter :)
A little while back I wrote a post about budgeting and making the most bang for your buck health wise. In that post I mentioned holding out until big bags of nuts were on sale and then whazzing up your own nut butters to save your hard earned moneys from the somewhat ridiculously priced (and also pretty small) jars of store bought nut butters.
It only came to my attention recently that I have never, not once, posted about making my own nut butter. Scandalous!
Luckily, today for your very own eyes to take in, I have finally put my words in action and created one of my absolute favourite nut butters.
Any guesses??
I'll give you a hint, it starts with 'C' and ends in 'ashew butter'
You guessed it! CASHEW BUTTER! There was a big bag of raw unsalted cashews this week at the grocery store, so I pounced and proceeded to make a masterpiece:
Step1. of making nut butters/ jams/ pickles etc. is to sterilise your jar:
To do this, I washed an empty jar of mixed nut butter with hot water and soap and then rinsed it again with just hot water. I then placed it on a tray with baking paper along with the lid and popped it in the oven at around 150 degrees celsius with the door open until all the liquid had evaporated. Jar= sterilised!
As for the nut butter? That was just a
500g bag of raw unsalted cashews popped in a food processor and processed!
I'm not going to lie. It's not that simple-pimple easy-peasy and it doe take a bit of time. So I placed the nuts in the processor and processed on low for around 3 mins until fine crumbs were formed. From then on in I kept starting and stopping the machine scraping down the sides continually (maybe processor for 1-2mins in between) Eventually, after around 15-20 mins, the nut butter was smooth and had sprad out from the ball it had created for a few minutes there, the heat of the processor and the oils in the nuts finally starting to form a spread.
A little taste test revealed a beautifully smooth, rich and creamy cashew spread :)
From there I started scooping the nut butter into my sterilised jar, pushing down on all the air bubbles, until it was full, full, full to the brim! (I even had some leftover!!)
Not a problem though, because I already had a sweet potato baking in the oven with it's name on the leftovers:
And that's the first time I enjoyed my home-made cashew butter- for dinner that night, encased in a warm, sweet potato:
Along with two poached eggs and spinach with a bowl of popcorn. Because, why not?
Brilliant pre-waittressing fuel!
I couldn't seem to get enough of my awesome nut butter and had the remaining leftovers that couldn't fit in the jar atop two wholemeal crumpets. It was awesome!
Alongside a cantaloupe green smoothie:
1 frozen banana + a few big chunks frozen cantaloupe + a huge handful of spinach + 3 big scoops greek yoghurt + 1/3 cup water- whazzed until smooth. It was pretty tasty (though kept giving me major brain freezes!)
That cashew butter though...
Oh yes.
What about you?
Have you ever made your own nut butter?
Favourite type of nut to butter-ise?
Sweet potatoes + --------? I think my favourite will always be sweet potatoes and almond butter, however cashew butter comes pretty close!
That's it from me today friends! I hope you all have an absolutely lovely Sunday, relax if you need to relax and of course, eat something delicious!! Bye for now! :D
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