Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Coconut peanut butter recipe

Coconut peanut butter
My family always buys peanut butter, and we always buy peanuts to eat on its own. We have always had a food processor at home but we never made our own peanut butter. I guess we thought that making peanut butter is a complex process. And I suppose we think its complex after looking at the list of ingredients on the jar, some of which are unknown. If we don’t know it must be complicated? Wrong, making peanut butter is so simple, process peanuts and you have peanut butter. The only complex parts are decisions that need to be made and there are a few of them:
  1. Do you want smooth or crunchy peanut butter? If you want crunchy add chopped nuts
  2. How much salt? This requires thinking and tasting, and most of us are good at that
  3. How smooth and creamy? If the peanut butter is not creamy enough, how much oil should you add
  4. What kind of sweeteners and how much? Personally I don’t like sweet peanut butter. You can add sugar or honey, the amount depending on your taste.
I used to only like my peanut butter plain and simple, without chocolate, honey or other distractors. I changed my mind when I experimented with coconut peanut butter. Peanut butter with a toasted coconut flavor, I like it, a lot.

Here’s the potential bad news. If you want to try coconut peanut butter, you probably cannot buy it from your supermarket. You have no choice but to make it. And guess what the good news is?


I haven't given precise amounts in the recipe. I am suggesting 3 parts peanuts to 1 part coconut, for example 3 cups peanuts to 1 cup coconut. With this ratio you get a subtle but noticeable toasted coconut flavor. You can add more coconuts if you prefer a stronger coconut flavor.  

Here a closer look at the coconut peanut butter. It looks like regular peanut butter, it does not look any prettier. What you can’t see very clearly from the photo is the taste, and its homemade!
Coconut peanut butter

Ingredients
3 parts peanuts, roasted
1 part desiccated coconut, preferably toasted
Salt (unless peanuts are salted)
Oil (optional, you may not need this. Any unflavoured oil will do, I used canola)

Directions
1.      Place peanuts and coconut in a food processor
2.      Process until you get a smooth paste, scrapping sides of the bowl if necessary. This may take 3-5 minutes
3.      Add a tiny amount of oil during the process if you want the peanut butter to be creamier 

3 comments:

  1. Wow. That certainly looks good! I'm guessing this can't get totally smooth with the dessiccated coconut?

    ReplyDelete
  2. ping: actually it does get smooth. Before making it I also thought there would be coconut bits but there wasn't, surprisingly.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh what an interesting combo, very curious.

    ReplyDelete

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