How To Make Almond Butter

I am often asked about nut butters.

To be honest I am not a huge fan of them. And here’s why: It takes a lot of nuts to yield a very small amount of nut butter. eg 1.5 cups of almonds yields only a bit more than 1/2 cup of almond butter.  

So you end up consuming a heck of a lot of nuts in each spoonful of nut butter, much much more than you should typically eat if you were eating whole nuts. And what’s wrong with nuts? In small amounts, for those who don’t have digestive issues or mineral deficiencies, nuts are awesome and in fact ranked as the 3rd most nutrient-dense food on the planet behind organ meats and herbs and spices (according Harvard University Chemist Dr Mat Lalonde. Check out pages 70-71 of Chris Kresser’s book “Your Personal Paleo Code” 2014 for a list of the most nutrient-dense foods). However nuts do contain more omega 6 than omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (which has an inflammatory effect on the body).

Secondly, unactivated nuts (ie nuts that have not been properly prepared through soaking and dehydrating) contain phytic acid which leaches minerals from the body and leads to digestive issues. Without doing a full due diligence I bet all store-bought nut butter are made from nuts that have not been properly prepared or “activated” (happy to be proved wrong here).

Thirdly, nut butters are typically consumed on bread and I have spend the past decade trying to reduce the amount of gluten (and grains generally for that matter) from my and my kids’ diet. The reasons for this go beyond the scope of this post but contact me should you wish to discuss the relevance and effect of grains on the human body.  The occasional consumption of smallish amounts of gluten-free properly prepared grains is fine for those without digestive issues (eg rice, buckwheat).

So eating huge amounts of nut butters, especially when the nuts are not activated, involves taking a massive omega 6 and phytic acid hit. It’s is a bit like the orange juice analogy where you end up consuming the fructose equivalent of 5 oranges in 1 glass of orange juice even though you couldn’t possibly eat 5 oranges in one sitting.

So if you are going to consume nut butters here’s what i suggest:

1. it’s best to make them yourself at home from activated nuts; and

2. consume only small amounts eg a couple mouthfuls at a time especially for youngsters.

Here’s how to make almond butter.  It’s dead easy:

Ingredients:

2 cups of salted activated almonds
2 tablespoons of coconut oil

Directions:

Process ingredients in a food processor for 15 minutes (yes that long!) stopping the food processor every few minutes to scrap down the sides and to prevent the machine from overheating. If making larger amounts, add the nuts in batches in the food processor.

Some recipes don’t require the addition of coconut oil. I found that without the coconut oil this makes the almond butter really hard to swallow and gets stuck on the back of your throat (hardly pleasant). Because my activated nuts are salted I don’t need to add additional salt. If yours are not salted you might like to add 1/4 tsp salt to the food processor.

Serve:

Eat straight off the spoon as is for a decadent dessert or snack, or with vegetable sticks, or smeared on slices of apple or pineapple, or drizzled onto pancakes or on a slice of traditionally prepared bread (stay tuned for my future posts on various buckwheat loaves – they are still a work in progress). Some add nut butters to their smoothies.  You can add a drizzle of honey or maple syrup onto your nut butter (which I did as you can see in the above photo).

Storage:

Nut butters keep for many weeks in a sealed container or jar in the fridge. The downside is that they will go quite hard though in the fridge. They will keep a few days out of the fridge.

Variations:

You can substitute any other type of nut. Macadamias don’t require as long in the food processor presumably due to their higher oil content. You just need to keep processing until the nuts reach the consistency of a smooth, creamy, butter. This will depend on the type of nut and how powerful your food processor is. You can flavour or sweeten your nut butter by adding the following while processing such as:

• raw cacao powder, cinnamon powder, and/or vanilla bean powder

• raw honey or maple syrup

• turmeric, cumin, ginger, garlic powder and/or chilli flakes (I’ve made turmeric and brazil nut butter before)

In this way you can make your own spreads and butters without resorting to expensive store bought varieties. Have you made nut butter before?  What ingredients did you use?

The photos below show you the transition from whole almonds to almond butter at 4 minute intervals over 15 minutes of processing.

Activated Buckwheat Flour Pancakes

In one of my recent posts on some of my new products I talked about my activated cinnamon buckwheat. In that post I mentioned that one of the many recipes I use this ingredient for is my activated buckwheat pancakes which have become a weekend ritual in my family. As promised, here’s the recipe.  Apologies for the delay in getting this to you….it has involved many years of painstaking iterations…such is the life of a perfectionist…..

Ingredients:

1 cup (170g) activated cinnamon buckwheat or activated rice or a combination of the 2
1.5 cups of whole milk
4 pastured eggs
pinch of unrefined salt
1 ripe banana
approx 5 tablespoons coconut oil for frying

Directions:

Process activated buckwheat/rice in a nut grinder until it resembles a fine soft flour. For best results process in 2-3 batches. You will not get the same result by using an ordinary food processor unless you have a Thermomix.

Add the eggs to the food processor and process until very well beaten- their colour will change from yellow to almost white. This will take several minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients to the food processor and process until mixture is a smooth well-blended batter.

For this quantity of ingredients I like to have 1 small, 1 medium and 1 large frying pan on the go at once for efficiency and add 2 tablespoons of coconut oil to each of the medium and large frying pans and 1 tablespoon of oil to the smallest pan. When the oil has melted pour batter into each frying pan. When underside is cooked to golden brown, transfer frying pans to oven under heated grill element to cook top side until golden brown (this avoids flipping pancakes over in pan!). Be sure to position the pancakes a fair distance from the grill element to prevent burning ie about middle of the oven.

Transfer to plate and, if desired, add one or more toppings such as:

• crispy bacon

• fruit (eg stewed fruit, sliced banana, fresh berries, passionfruit)

• a dollop of cream

• drizzle of maple syrup, maple butter (which is whipped maple syrup) or raw honey

• a dollop of jam, choc coconut spread, chocolate sauce etc.

Leftovers can be refrigerated and used for kids school lunches/morning tea esp as ‘bread’ for a banana sandwhich.

Serves 3-4.

Variations: to make a berry pancake add some frozen berries to the batter after you have poured it into the frying pan and before transferring to grill element.

Tip: Across 3 frying pans this quantity of batter should produce pancakes that are quite thin. This is preferable to a thick pancake when using buckwheat flour as buckwheat is very dense so a thick pancake will end up doughy and uncooked in the centre. When pouring the batter into the frying pans if the batter at the end of the bowl is more coarse then that means that you have not processed your buckwheat into a fine enough flour.

Banana raspberry coconut pancake (grain-free, sweetener-free)

I have eggs for breakfast every morning cooked any which way. But this morning I had a hankering for something a little different....something more decadent with some sweetness.....something akin to a pancake without the dreaded gut-irritating nutrient-sapping flour........so this is what I concocted and it hit the spot......

Ingredients:

• Pastured eggs (allow 2-3 eggs per person depending on appetite)

• Home-made cream cheese OR store bought quark OR pouring cream OR mud cream - allow 1 tablespoon per person (optional)

• Banana, sliced (allow 1/2 banana per person)

• A couple of handfuls of fresh of frozen rasberries (I used frozen, unthawed)

• Flesh of 1 young coconut butter OR coconut oil for frying

Directions:

Turn on grill element in oven. Melt butter or coconut oil in frying pan. Beat eggs and cream cheese with hand held blender then add to frying pan. Add banana (I sliced it straight into egg mixture), raspberries and coconut slithers. Cook on gentle heat for approx 5 minutes so that the underside of the pancake is cooked then transfer to oven under grill element so that the top side cooks. This avoids trying to flip the pancake and making a big mess! It is ready when  the top is golden brown and the eggs are set. If mixture is still runny add back on stovetop to cook until set. If you have a sweet tooth you could drizzle a little maple syrup over the top when serving (though we didn't need to - the fruit alone is sweet enough for me).

This was teamed with a raw dark chocolate smoothie made by mixing the following with a hand held blender:

• Whole milk (1 cup per person)

• Home made kefir and/or yogurt (I like Alpine goats yogurt or Meredith's sheeps milk yogurt) - allow 1/4 cup per person

• Coconut water from 1 young coconut

• Raw cacao powder (1 teaspoon per person)

• Cinnamon powder (1/2 teaspoon per person)

• Vanilla powder (1/4 teaspoon per person)

• Home-made gelatinous beef stock (1 tablespoon per person) (I promise you won't taste the beef at all in the smoothie- it just adds thickness- like a real thickshake- and loads of nutrients)

I rarely measure anything - I tend to just thrown things together- so the above measurements are approximates.

A variation on the banana raspberry coconut pancake is a banana chocolate pancake as follows:

• Pastured eggs (allow 2-3 eggs per person depending on appetite)

• Home-made cream cheese OR store bought quark - allow 1 tablespoon per person (optional)

• Banana, sliced (allow 1/2 banana per person)

• Raw cacao powder

• Cinnamon powder

• Vanilla powder

• Butter OR coconut oil for frying

Cook as per pancake recipe above omitting the raspberries and coconut and adding a generous sprinkling of the 3 powders after you add the sliced banana. You can add a further dusting of  raw cacao powder prior to serving (guess who likes chocolate?!?).....

Using the egg mixture as the pancake base you can make whatever variations of the pancake recipe you like! Cool, hey?! The eggs provide much needed brain-loving saturated fat to slow down the release of the sugars contained in the fruit to avoid fluctuations in blood sugar levels with insulin spikes and crashes. The saturated fat in the egg yolks helps with the absorbtion of the fat-soluble vitamins and minerals in the fruit.

I hope you enjoy these creations as much as we did! Do you have a grain-free pancake recipe? If so please share it! I've tried using activated nut meal together with the beaten eggs but the mixture is more crumbly /coarse and less smooth than plain eggs (or eggs with cream).

Its a glorious day here in Sydney so I'm now making a beeline for Bronte beach for a vitamin D fix and some fun in the sun ....With love x