Chocolate Coconut Cashew Butter

I love peanut butter and sunflower seed butter, but this week it’s been all about another kind of nut butter.

Chocolate Coconut Cashew Butter anyone?

 

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Chocolate Coconut Cashew Butter

Makes about 2/3 to 3/4 cup

1/2 cup cashews, soaked (I used raw, unsalted, whole cashews from TJs.  Use raw/unsalted if possible)

1/3 cup agave/honey/maple syrup (combo of one or any), to taste

1/3 cup cocoa powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Optional and omit if you don’t like coconut flavored food; at which point you’d have Chocolate Cashew Butter:

1/4 cup coconut flakes (unsweetened or sweetened)

2 tablespoonscoconut oil

Soak cashews in water for at least an hour (4-6 hours or more is ideal).  Remove soaked cashews and add them with the remaining ingredients to a Vita-Mix, high speed blender, or food processor.  Blend until mixture is smooth.

Tips:

If you don’t have a Vita or similar type blender (i.e. you are using a Magic Bullet or mini food processor), your cashew butter may not get as smooth or creamy as it will in a Vita, but just keep blending.  Scrape down the sides, blend.  Repeat. Repeat. Even in the Vita, it took about 4-5 minutes on high to get the nut butter really smooth.  Find those ear plugs. No one ever said nut butter has to be perfectly smooth.  Crunchy nut butter is still great.

If the nut butter seems too thick and your machine is having a hard time really blending the butter, add a bit more agave/honey/maple syrup, or coconut oil to make blending easier.

I store mine in refrigerator; will solidify a bit in the fridge from the coconut oil but softens again at room temp. 

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Everything in…

…Blend.  And keep on blendin’

This was after about 2 minutes on high.  It took another 3 or so to get it really smooth. 

It all smooths out.  It just takes awhile. And it doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth, anyway.

Enjoy!

If this recipe looks a bit familiar, it’s because it’s the same recipe that I used for the coating of the Chocolate Coconut Kale Chips I made earlier in the week.

The coating was too good not to make and eat as nut butter.

Eat this on fruit, on bread, on top of oatmeal, in smoothies, as a smoothie “topper”, on crackers, or however you like to eat nut butter.

Or just dip your spoon into the bowl and go to town.

If you like chocolate, infused with coconut flavoring, then this recipe is for you.

The other great thing is that cashew butter is much easier to make than almond butter or even peanut butter.  Cashews just soften up and blend far easier than other kinds of nuts, in my experience.

I should know.  I’ve accidentally made cashew butter many times in the process of making Raw Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls

So it was easy to make cashew butter for this recipe.  And it was only natural, but of course, to add chocolate and coconut in, too.

From my last post about Locally Grown and whether or not you support locally grown foods or farmers, it was great to read how many of you do as much as you possibly can to support local agriculture.  I think it’s wonderful to support small businesses, locally-owned, and family-0wned businesses from farms to restaurants to service providers when ever possible.

And yes, I can’t wait til my locally grown avocados ripen up!  Thanks for sharing what you’d make with them.

Questions:

1. What’s your favorite kind of nut butter?

I have a serious love affair with peanut butter.  I have an entire post dedicted to my peanut butter recipes.  From tofu to desserts to peanut sauce, I use peanut butter all the time.

I also love sunflower seed butter.  TJ’s sunflower seed butter, especially considering how inexpensive it is, is probably my favorite nut butter for just “eating” whereas PB is what I use in recipes.  However, it’s like picking which blog is your favorite.  Impossible to choose.

But it’s between PB and SFSButter for me. 

All my recipes that I use PB or SFSB in, you could use Almond Butter in them, or another nut butter.  I know some people have allergies or taste preferences and everything is interchangeable with my recipes.

2. Have you ever tried to make your own nut butter?  What kind and how did it turn out?

I have tried to make almond butter before and it so-so.  And I don’t really love almond butter anyway but this was a few years ago when I first got my Vita and wanted to make nut butter in it!  Almonds don’t soften nearly as well as cashews, plus I didn’t flavor it well enough with agave/honey/maple, vanilla, and it was very boring tasting to me.

I have never tried to make my own peanut butter, or sunflower seed butter.  For $3.99 a jar, max, at TJ’s, I’ll leave those to the pros.

However, chocolate coconut cashew butter, cost me less than $3.99 to make and took 5 minutes.  Try it!