Homemade Sunbutter

I am just all about the recipes this week, aren’t I? Well, that will happen, since one of my primary ways of saving money on groceries is making things from scratch!

I have had a wonderful time getting to know my KitchenAid food processor- Hubby did a great job picking it out. Today I decided I should make sunflower seed “butter” for my son. We’re waiting to try peanut butter because of a history of allergy in our family. He LOVES sunbutter, but it is so expensive! So what do I do? Make it myself of course!

It happens to be really easy to make. First, you’ll need:

1 cup sunflower seeds (raw- uncooked, unsalted)

3-4 TBS oil- I used extra light olive oil, but I’ve read you can use walnut, almond or canola oil. Using nut oils kinda defeats the purpose for me though

dash of sea salt

Optional: Sweetener. I used “local” honey from northern Ohio . Thanks Mom! You could also use agave nectar or maple syrup. If you use honey, do not feed this to a child under 1 year old.

Directions: Process sunflower seeds for 4-5 minutes, or until it looks like sand. I found that after 4 minutes mine started piling on the sides of the food processor pretty bad, so processing further seemed pointless. I scraped and tried a minute more, but it seemed good to me.

*NOTE* If you’ve made peanut butter before, sunbutter does NOT act like peanuts do when they are ground. Peanuts have more natural oil and will turn fairly creamy during processing- you have to provide the oil for sunflowers, they just will not do this on their own.

Once your sunflower seeds look like sand, you can add the oil, one TBS at a time, scraping the sides between oil additions. After the oil is in, you can add your sweetener and salt to taste. Here is a picture of my seeds after 2-3 TBS oil- They were kinda like playdough at this point, and CR reaaaaallly liked it.I actually thought I was done at this point, but decided to add more oil, just to see what would happen…and Voila! Just a couple more TBS of oil, and I had CREAMINESS! Yay!! I went ahead and processed it for a few more minutes once it turned creamy. Why not?

Ahhhhh, SUCCESS! Even Hubby game me a closed-eyed “Mmmmmmmmm”. What more could a girl want? Now, since all the ingredients here are pantry items, I’d say you have a good 4-6 weeks to gobble this stuff up before it isn’t so good anymore. But why would it last that long?

I’ll leave you with a picture of CR signing “Please” for more with sunbutter on his face

Here’s to living- Happier, healthier, more FRUGAL lives!

~~FrugalMegan~~