Homemade Cashew butter

Homemade Cashew butter is unbelievably rich, smooth and creamy. Packed with nutrients, it is an excellent substitute for real butter and a concentrated form of food energy. I was recently introduced to cashew butter and I fell in love with it immediately. Eating it with rice crackers or just scooping it out of the jar to eat is simply yum.

Cashew nut is technically a seed and not a nut, but because of its usage, it is called a nut butter. Nut butter like cashew butter, peanut butter etc., generally are high in oil content, some more than others. Cashew nut has a lower oil content than say peanut, it can be made without the addition of extra oil but oil helps to lighten its texture.

This Cashew butter is made with toasted cashew nuts, you can use raw cashew nuts but they will need to be soaked to remove toxins.

Any tasteless oil can be added to your Cashew butter although you can add flavourful oils too, like coconut oil. Coconut oil or any other flavourful oil will give it a wholesome, more complex flavour. I mix mine with pure virgin coconut oil. You can play with flavours to personalize your butter.

Cashew butter will stay fresh longer if you refrigerate or freeze it. Upon storage, the oil will separate, leave your butter outside the refrigerator for about 20 minutes to bring it back to room temperature, stir to remix and use as usual.

Spread cashew butter on toast or crackers, add to smoothies, oatmeal, stir-fry, curry (Indian and Thai), as shawarma spread, dip for fruit and vegetable slices, as replacement of butter in baking. I regularly replace part of the butter in my banana bread with cashew butter, it gives the bread so much richness.

To make Homemade cashew butter

2 cups roasted cashew nut
2 tablespoons coconut oil or vegetable oil
2 tablespoons honey 
1/4 teaspoon salt 
Other optional ingredients: sugar, maple syrup, golden syrup, vanilla etc.

Place cashew nuts and salt in a blender dry mill, grind on high.

The nuts will break into smaller bits which will become sandy.