As you know from my previous How-To entries, I’m not exactly re-inventing the wheel over here.  What I do hope to do, though, is provide you with the education and vicarious experience to give you the confidence that if I can do it (little ol’ me!), then so can you!  Everything you could possibly need to know (and more) on making your own nut butters at home has already been published on the web.  So, I’m just throwing my post into the fray and I highly encourage you to check out Tasty Yummies’ How to Make Homemade Nut Butters for even more insight into various other nuts and flavour options, as well as thoughts on soaked nuts vs. unsoaked nuts, raw vs. roasted and all things nut butter-related!

Even for a self-professed food blogger and lifelong bakeaholic, I’ll admit that the idea of making own nut butters at home intimidated me.  It just seemed a little bit too “organic,” too “out-there” for me.  It was akin to people shearing their own sheep and spinning and dying their own yarn to knit their own long underpants (all noble pursuits, mind you, but just beyond my own personal level of DIY-ness).  But you’ve seen to what lengths a great-looking recipe will drive me (since I made my own cottage cheese explicitly so I could make recipes I kept seeing featured on Desserts With Benefits, like this Healthy Peanut Butter Fudge which has been appearing on repeat on my Instagram).  FYI, this time around it was these Homemade Healthy “Ferrero Rocher” Chocolate Hazelnut Truffles and Chocolate Hazelnut Truffle Squares by The Foodie Teen that got me fired up about making homemade hazelnut butter.

And of course, when I still lived in Canada, there was no NEED to make my own nut butters, not with every possible kind of nut and/or seed butter known to humankind available along the back wall of the local Bulk Barn (including nuts I hadn’t even thought about making into butters, such as walnuts or macadamias).   But, as Dorothy would say, “We’re not in KansasCanada anymore, Toto.”  So it turns out that an expatriate assignment in South Korea is making me even more resourceful.  And oh, I’ve always been competitive, so if any of My Favourite Food Bloggers was posting a nut butter recipe, then a little spark in me burned, “Hey Golden Graham Girl – YOU can do it, too!” (because of course I address myself in the third person with my blogging pseudonym when I have these inner discussions).

As you also probably know by now, I have a serious problemobsession with nut butters.  After spending a small fortune on iherb.com* to order various specialty nut butters (it was a glorious day when we found almond butter at the local Costco in addition to the standard not-actually-a-nut peanut butter), making my own nut butters at home was supposed to be a major selling point for getting my own Vitamix high-speed blender.  And yet, lo and behold my first test batch of homemade nut butter was done in my mini food processor (bought at the same Costco that now carries Kirkland Signature Creamy Almond Butter).  So it just goes to show that you DON’T need a Vitamix or other high-speed blender to make your own nut butters at home.  In fact, there are really only two ingredients: nut of choice and PATIENCE (option to add a little bit of “helper” oil to get things headed down the smooth and creamy path if PATIENCE is in short supply).

And of course, if all else fails, there is still iherb, where I got this Dastony Stone-Ground 100% Organic Hazelnut Butter*.

Some process shots:

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How-To: Make Cottage Cheese at Home

How-To: Make Unsweetened Applesauce at Home