A sweet and salty spread with nuts, dates and spices.
This recipe comes from All Ways Nutritious, a wonderful and informative blog by a holistic nutritionist with a lot of really tasty and healthy food ideas. Click here to check out her post on this delicious nut spread. This is how I made it:
1 cup almonds, soaked overnight
4 dates
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp coconut oil
Combine almonds in a food processor until very finely chopped. Add remaining ingredients and blend until smooth.
This spread had a really great flavour, but I was a little disappointed with the texture. It was more of a course paste than a butter, and hard to spread because it was so thick. I tried adding some maple syrup to thin it out and make it more creamy but it didn’t help very much. The one nice thing about the consistency was that it made great edible playdough! The kids had fun rolling it into balls and popping them in their mouths. I’m curious to try it again with pecans as the original recipe calls for. I really like pecans and I think they would be great in this, but I didn’t have any on hand so I used only almonds. It was still very nice though and I loved the cinnamon and vanilla flavours with just a hint of saltiness. We ate it on toast, fruit, crackers and even in our oatmeal. It’s a versatile spread and a healthy alternative to jams and some nut-butters that can contain a lot of sugar.