Homemade Almond Butter

I absolutely love almond butter. I eat it on apples, with bananas, in cookies and sometimes I even have some on  toast. I think of almond butter as being like peanut butter's sophisticated cousin. (though don't get me wrong... I love peanut butter, too!)

Today I was in the mood for some almond butter, but there was none to be found in our fridge. I did have some raw almonds, so I decided to try to make some. I am so glad I did. Not only is it crazy easy to make nut butter, it's also cheaper. Store-bought almond butter is about $8 for a 12-oz jar, or about $.67 per ounce. The almond butter I made today cost about $.46 per ounce. Cost will, of course, vary depending on where you buy your nuts. I paid $6.29/lb, which I think is about average.

There is no recipe, as such, as turning those almonds into almond butter doesn't take much. All you need is your almonds and a food processor. If you want to get fancy, you can roast and salt your almonds first, but I'm an almond butter purist, so I just used mine as-is. Dump your almonds into your food processor and start 'er up. Stop now and then to scrape down the sides, then keep going.

After a few moments, your almonds will look like this:

It may seem impossible that this somewhat powdery meal textured stuff could ever be almond butter, but trust me, it will. Patience! Keep processing, and scraping, processing and scraping. Soon it will start to clump together a bit, like this:

Keep going! You're almost there. Just keep processing and scraping until it's creamy. When it looks good, try out some of your homemade almondy deliciousness, then put the rest in a jar in the fridge and use within a couple of weeks. 

Yum!