I love peanut butter: chunky or smooth, it always pleases me. Never having made homemade peanut butter, I wondered what it would be like to experience such an endeavor. What is it like you ask? Delicious and easy. I simply mixed 2 cups of unsalted peanuts with 2 tbsp canola oil and 1 tbsp Splenda in the food processor. Depending on your preference for creamy or chunky, blending it for 5 to 10 minutes is crucial. I made my mostly creamy with a few surprise chunks. It definitely turned out tasty.

Because I discovered that homemade peanut butter is so delicious, I wondered what it would be like to make butters from other nuts. I read that butters can be made from practically any nut available. Seeing as my favorite nuts are almonds and walnuts, they are extremely nutritious, and I happened to have them on hand, I decided to make both spreads. After reading the ingredients label on the back of my jar of Jif, I decided to start with the almond butter using almond oil, sliced almonds, honey, and Splenda. With the food processor out and my "mis en place" I had to experiment quite a bit with the amounts of each ingredient I would include. My finale? 1 cup almonds, 2 tbsp almond oil, 2 tbsp honey, 1/4 cup Splenda. Chop in food processor until extremely well blended. (At least 5 minutes with my food processor, perhaps you may have a more helpful one.) It didn't take much to get the right amounts, just continuous addition of each ingredient and observation of the amount put in each time. The taste? Sweet, with a mild almond oomph!

With so much success with my almond butter, I was definitely going to continue with trying to make a walnut butter concoction. With a nice base of what ingredients I needed, I started with 1 cup chopped walnuts, 2 tbsp almond oil, and 1/4 cup Splenda. After blending it for some time, feeling spontaneous, and desiring a to get a bit more creativity I decided to add a my favorite dark chocolate to the recipe, about 2 oz. The result: savored rich brilliance. The bold drive of walnuts perfectly blends with the decadent chocolate chunk morsels and the Splenda adds just a petite kick of sugary sweetness. I purchased my walnuts and almonds at Whole Foods and am quite eager to head back to the store to buy a few more types of nuts, and try out some other recipe ideas. I'm thinking walnuts and raspberries, macadamia nuts and peaches, or pecan apple cinnamon butter. One thing is quite certain, I highly advise any ambitious nut butter rosettes to venture into the cosmos of homemade butter.