We held off on giving Miss H peanut butter until she was well past her first birthday. While we had no reason to believe she would have a peanut allergy, I still wanted to be cautious. After we gave it to her, all was fine…until she got a nasty diaper rash the next day! A friend mentioned to me that peanuts are very acidic, which confirmed my suspicions that there was a link between the peanut butter and the rash. So, we decide to start giving her some almond butter, as almonds are considered to be very low acid.
Buying a good almond better is expensive! We wanted something with as few ingredients as possible and settled on the Justin’s brand as it had only two ingredients (almonds and palm fruit oil). As I have developed an extreme almond butter addiction (OMG it’s so good!), it was an extra $10-$12 a week being added to our grocery bill for almond butter. After a few weeks we realized there was a perfect solution – try making our own!
Doing this ourselves makes total sense – we can buy almonds in bulk for a good price from a Middle Eastern grocery store near us and we have a heavy duty Vitamix blender. We toasted 3 cups of almonds in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes. After letting them cool, we put the almonds in our blender used the tamper that comes with the blender to help get everything into the blades. We kept some vegetable oil on hand in case it was needed, but we found that our almond butter was plenty smooth without it so we never added the oil.
Straight out of the blender the almond butter is warm and ridiculously addictive! The 3 cups of almonds yields about 1 3/4 cup of almond butter, or 16 ounces – the same quantity as the jar we had been buying from the grocery store. Not only is making your own cheaper if you score a good deal on almonds, you have complete control over the ingredients and the salt levels (if you prefer a salty almond butter).
If you don’t have a Vitamix or other heavy duty blender that can handle making nut butter, you could also use a food processor, although it may take longer to blend the nuts – the Vita Mix takes about 10 minutes.
The next time you have an almond butter craving, make your own – you will thank me!
grapefruit / 4923 posts
that sounds yum! my parents have a vitamix, maybe i will borrow theirs to try this out.
olive / 64 posts
I never think to make my own nut butters. Good idea! Also, I think this website provides great info (including research and AAP recommendation) on feeding babies foods like peanuts and shellfish prior to age 1. It really helped me make decisions I felt good about so I want to share it with others.
http://wholesomebabyfood.momtastic.com/forbiddenbabyfood.htm#.UkAq-6a9LCQ
I also have a recipe for a really yummy banana, almond , date smoothie your almond butter would be amaze balls in if anyone is interested
blogger / grapefruit / 4836 posts
OOH I can’t wait to try this!
I have a bag of almonds in the freezer. Getting the food processor out right now!
blogger / grapefruit / 4836 posts
Done! Using the food processor I only had to run it for about a minute instead of 10. Eating it on graham crackers now…yummy!
honeydew / 7091 posts
I love homemade almond butter!!
Sometimes I find that for whatever reason the almonds aren't releasing the oil very well, so I have to add a little bit of oil to get it going – I add coconut oil, SO GOOD!
I've also made dark chocolate almond butter, salted almond butter, maple syrup & brown sugar almond butter, and I've added coconut flakes to a batch too.
wonderful grape / 20453 posts
But the Justin’s vanilla almond butter is just TOO AMAZING
I always figured that a big bag of almonds would be really expensive. Maybe it’s not as much as I would think it is.
honeydew / 7488 posts
This is awesome! If I ever get my Vitamix I’m going to give it a shot. In the meantime, I am a huge fan of Barney Butter. It is the smoothest thing ever.
blogger / grapefruit / 4836 posts
@Blackbird, I bought my bag at Sams…it was SO MUCH cheaper than buying them in the grocery store.
I added a little bit of honey to mine…now I am wondering if I could add some vanilla extract!
wonderful grape / 20453 posts
@mrs. Lion, i was just wondering that….they don’t have any online, but I’ll take a look next time I’m at Sam’s!
I have a jar of the Justin’s honey almond butter at work but the vanilla is where it’s at!
guest
If you like coconut, you should try making coconut butter. It’s just as easy to make at home and O M G it is so good. Just put unsweetened shredded coconut in the blender. It’s also amazing mixed with the almond butter!
blogger / grapefruit / 4836 posts
Eek! I was looking for nutritional info on homemade almond butter (80 cals per tbs if anyone else is curious!) and saw that this is supposed to be refrigerated. Do you store yours in the fridge??
blogger / apricot / 366 posts
Loving that everyone has so many great variations for almond butter!
@Mrs. Lion: Yes, we refrigerate ours! I’m sorry – I should have included that in my post. We refrigerate it just like we would any other “natural” nut butter we buy as they don’t have a additives/preservatives (just as if we have a more mainstream peanut butter we just leave it in our pantry).
blogger / pear / 1563 posts
Oh my goodness! I really wish we had a Vitamix or food processor just so we could make this! DS goes through A LOT of almond butter because he loves it and it’s high in calories (which he needs).
I will remember this for future reference!