Smoked Almond Butter

Recently I have been putting a great deal of effort into graduate school applications and will be for about the next month and a half therefore posts that I do make will likely be focused on easier recipes that will not take a long period of time to make or blog about. After this period of time I am hoping to really focus on creating and polishing old recipes that I have made and publishing those. So this week I made Smoked Almond butter. It is a simple recipe that allows for a variation of the typical peanut butter that most Americans eat and it is very easy to make.

Smoked Almond butter

smoke 'em if you got 'em

Ingredients:
1 lb smoked almonds
2 tsp cane sugar
4 TBSP vegetable oil

Directions:
pour almonds and sugar into the bowl of a food processor
Process almonds and sugar while slowly adding the 4 tablespoons of vegetable oil into the processor bowl (my food processor has a oil drip reservoir which is perfect for this and making dressings) until creamy (I like mine chunky so I did not process it as much as some may prefer)

Suggestions:
spread on multi-grain bread and pile bacon, pears, and provolone cheese or a smoked Gouda then toast the entire sandwich. (pictured below)
serve with salmon and alfalfa sprouts on a nice roll with a tiny amount of cream cheese.

Almonds and sugar in the bowl

I like mine to look like a deli mustard

A double layer of pears

A layer of bacon on top of a layer of cheese

I call this one "Sandwich in the setting sun"

Mixed Nut butter

So this week I did a mixed nut butter as part of the Spread 'em set of recipes. I decided on doing this as a fast recipe that would be easy to write up so that I can focus on other responsibilities and so that I have time to plan for some very special recipes coming up. The mixed nut butter also serves as a proof of concept for other flavors that will come out at some point most likely after a lot of the holiday season is over with.

Mixed Nut Butter

A tasty blend of various nuts that have been roasted and salted.

Ingredients:
1 cup mixed nuts (I used pre-roasted and salted nuts for this recipe as a means of saving time feel free to roast and salt nuts to your desired level if you want.)
1-2 tablespoons vegetable oil (use more for a thinner sauce consistency or less for a thicker spread consistency)
1-2 teaspoons white sugar (Optional ingredient! [for a sweeter nut butter add in more.])

Instructions:
place mixed nuts in a food processor
chop nuts until a fine chop consistency (about 1 minute) reserve anywhere from a 1/4 to 1/2 cup of the chopped nuts if you want a chuck consistency
add sugar to the chopped nuts in the processor
continue to process the nuts while slowly adding the vegetable oil until creamy
add reserved nuts back into the mixture if you reserved some

Suggestions:
try using honey, brown sugar, molasses or your favorite sweetener instead of white sugar.
Can it and give it as a gift along with fruit preserves, dried fruit, wine, summer sausage, and cheese for a nice picnic basket.
use it instead of regular peanut butter for a little
verity in your PB&J sandwiches.

Brazil nuts, almonds, cashews, peanuts, hazelnuts, and pecans

This is also great for ice cream. YAY! multi use of a recipe!

I went for a saucy style so that I can easily mix it with cream cheese for bagels