Almond butter is an excellent treat and a great way to get those good fats into your diet, but it’s quite pricey to buy. Did you know you can make your own almond butter? It’s actually pretty easy. You need a decent food processor and some almonds. I bought a bag of raw almonds and a bag of dry roasted. When you buy the almonds make sure the only ingredient is raw almonds. You don’t want any salt or anything else in there.

Throw a cup or two of almonds into the food processor. Make sure not to do too many almonds at once or you’ll run into problems later in the process.

Start pulsing the food processor to break the almonds into small pieces.

Once the almonds are broken down and not making a ton of noise, you can turn the processor on and let it go. After a few minutes, the natural oils will begin to come out of and everything will ball up.

There is still a long way to go, but this is the first time you’ll believe this is actually going to work. Scrape things off the sides and bottom a bit and keep processing.

After a few more minutes, the sides of the food processor will begin to gather the beginnings of your almond butter. Do some more scraping and keep going. Each batch of almonds should get about 15-20 minutes on the blades. Eventually you end up with something looking like the picture below.

Store your almond butter in a jar and store it in the refrigerator, where it will keep for about 30 days from what I’ve read. If you store some in the freezer, use it within 6 months. I dip apple slices in the almond butter for a tasty snack, but I bet it’s a great replacement for the PB in PB&J. Enjoy!

Now that I’ve done it, I will never again make almond butter again. The time commitment and cleanup aren’t worth it. I’d rather pay what they charge at the store. If you have kids and then make sandwiches it could be a fun weekend project though.