Home Made Almond Butter, Or Patience

For the last little while, I’ve been toiling over several manuscripts.  Apart from being kind of paranoid, I’m also a total perfectionist.  But the other day, I was getting fed up with the process.  I wanted the damn stories to be done–perfect (or as perfect as they can be)–so that I could send them out to find their homes! Of course, that’s just not the way things work.

It struck me that patience has to be a part of any process if the product is going to turn out right when I was making almond butter in my brand new candy apple red food processor.  Let me tell you–after what seemed like a ridiculously long time of watching almond dust spurt up at the clear dome, I was beginning to wonder if maybe I’d made one of those really stupid cooking mistakes that I make from time to time.  (Think baking brownies with honey, coconut oil and no flour as a misguided attempt at clean eating.  Suffice it to say, I’ll make my brownies the “dirty” way from now on).

But then something that can only be explained as kitchen magic happened.  The almond dust started separating into little round globs.  I’m not going to lie, it still didn’t look like anything that I wanted to eat.  In fact, it looked gross.  But it was progress.  After some time of lip biting and watching the icky globs, they began to transform into smooth creases of creamy butter. When the fragrant smell of almonds filled the kitchen and they churned easily in the processor I knew that I had something good.

That’s the thing with process–it takes time to get to that moment of goodness.  But once you get there…it’s about as perfect as it gets.

Here is the full recipe for my almond butter (super easy):

1. Roast the almonds (3 cups) at 350 F for 10 minutes (or less if they seem to be browning quickly).

2. Puree the almonds, adding a cup at a time to the food processor until smooth.

3. Add any oils or spices to the almond butter after removing from the food processor.  (I like mind plain, but 2 tsp of honey is also nice).

Note: If using olive oil, don’t put it in the food processor, or it will get bitter and become one of those stupid cooking mistakes…