Almond-Cashew Butter

Let me put this bluntly: I ADORE nut-butters.  I like cashew butter far better than I like cashews.  I like almond butter about as much as I like almonds.  I’ve never tried walnut butter, but toasted walnuts are my topping of choice for just about everything; I’ll have to try walnut butter one of these days.  Today I decided to do something ZANY.  I had some cashews to use up and some almonds lying around.  It occurred to me that I could make two different butters, but then, I thought, why the heck would I want to do that when I could just chuck everything in the Cuisinart and get it all done at once?  Almond-cashew butter can’t be bad, can it?

Well, since this morning, I’ve already had two giant spoonfuls of almond-cashew butter and I can attest that it is FABULOUS.  I’m still a die-hard fan of plain, old, chunky peanut butter.  Nothing beats it.  But this is a delicious addition to the nut-butters lining my pantry.  Spread this on bread, dollop in oatmeal, mix in ice vanilla cream (it’s really good; you gotta try it!) with chocolate chips (drool), or, if you’re anything like me, just grab a spoonful for a midnight snack.

Ingredients:
1 cup organic cashews
1 cup organic almonds

Directions:

1.  If your nuts aren’t toasted, you can chuck them in the blender/Cuisinart raw.  I happen to really love the flavor of toasted nuts and because it takes less than five minutes to toast them (with virtually no man-power required except opening an oven door or stirring a spoon around a pan), I always toast them.  To do this, you can heat a skillet on medium-high on the stove and stir until the cashews brown nicely and the nuts become fragrant.  Or, if you’re a super-dooper lazy bones (aka: moi) preheat your oven to 350 degrees (hotter if you want to speed this up; but keep an eye out, if you’re broiling, these guys’ll be done in less than a minute).  Check every minute or two until the nuts turn a golden-y brown.

2. Dump the nuts in the blender or Cuisinart.  Start whirring.  Above I took a few pictures of the process of blending.  First, it’s going to be loud.  Wear big headphones.  Then they’ll reduce to a fine powder; if you stop here, you can use the powder in replace of a small amount of flour in a lot of cookie/bar/pie/bread recipes.  Keep whirring if you’re on the nut butter route.  Soon nuts will start to form a shape, and then a ball that will roll around the Cuisinart for a couple minutes.  Keeeeep whirring.  Then, miraculously, the ball will start to loose shape.  Keep whirring until the nut butter is smooth, stirrable, not in a ball–essentially oozed out around the bottom of the blending container.

3.  Scoop out and serve!  If you serve it right away it’ll be nice and warm — take at least a big dollop of it right away.  Trust me, it’s fabulous.  All in all, the whirring time probably will range from about 5-7 minutes total.  That sounds like a long time, but think about it this way: you could have your very own nut butter (replace any of the nuts here with any of your favorites) in the time it takes to read the comics!