Easy almond butter recipe

We have kids with nut allergies. I’ve written about the day we discovered our youngest girl was seriously allergic to peanuts. She’s not the only kid in our family with a nut allergy. Our eldest girl is allergic to cashew nuts, walnuts and pistachio nuts and our middle child is allergic to peanuts and sesame. Eating out, birthday parties and socialising with friends can be really tricky. There’s no family meals at Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian or Turkish restaurants. Most of our gatherings centre on Italian, pub meals and hamburger joints. When Twiggy and I travel, kid-free, one of the first things we both do is eat a Summer Roll, buy a bag of cashews and fill up on peanut butter.

Luckily for us, no-one is allergic to hazelnuts so we do eat a lot of Nutella in our house. You can imagine how excited we were when we found almond butter in the shops. You can also imagine how surprised we were to discover it’s about $5 million a jar. Liquid gold I tell you.

Earlier this week, Twiggy thought he’d give almond butter making a go and it worked. Yay to that. This is a very rough recipe, but the best part is you can switch it up to suit your tastebuds and you don’t have to worry that a rogue peanut or cashew nut has accidentally dropped into the grinding machine.

Easy Almond Butter Recipe

WHAT YOU NEED:

Blender – we used  a traditional blender to get the nuts to a fine consistency and a Braun blender for the final stages.

Almonds – mix of toasted and raw.

Olive oil.

Sea salt.

Water.

WHAT TO DO:

First blend small batches of about a cup of natural almonds and half a cup of roasted almonds until fine.

Put the blended almonds into the Braun blender (again in batches) and slowly add a dash of oil olive and a similar amount of water and blend until your preferred consistency. If you want it smoother, add more oil and water. If you want it crunchier, then add less. Season with salt.

If you want you can put all the almonds at once into your food processor (with a s-blade) and let it blend for about 10 to 15 minutes, stopping to scrape down the sounds a couple of times. First it will be like a dust and then slowly the oils will come out of the nuts and start to form a paste. Ours is quite thick and crunchy, but it could be much runnier. Add more water and olive oil to make it smoother.

STORE:

Pop it into an airtight container. top with a bit of olive oil and put it in the fridge.

And just like that you have almond butter. When you go to spread it on toast or bread it will be a bit crumbly (we like ours crunchy), but when warmed a little and spread with a little margarine it’s fab. It’s also a great alternative to peanut butter in recipes such as satay sauce.

We know we can eat it without nervousness and that means the world to us. Anyone with kids with anaphylaxis are anxious around food all of the time. To not feel that is a fabulous thing.

Do you have allergies in your house?

Bianca x