I love sunflower seeds and recently bought a gigantic 1kg bag of them from Baking World for only 3,600won! I normally just toss a handful of them into oatmeal, cookies, and muffins, but the other day, I thought I'd get a little more experimental and try making sunflower seed butter ! This was only my second time trying homemade nut butter. The first time was with almonds, and even though I used my ancient, toy-sized food processor, the almond butter came out surprisingly well, so I figured sunflowers would be just as easy if not easier.
Um... I figured wrong. Not only did it take my little processor almost 50 minutes of blending (the poor little thing was overheated and exhausted by the end), I also had to add about 1-2 tsp of oil for it to even begin to look smooth. I was hoping that I could do it without any oil, but I guess sunflower seeds just have less natural fat in them, so they don't blend up as easily as say almonds or peanuts.
After 10 minutes of blending...
30 minutes... It went on like this for the looooongest time, at which point I decided to add some canola oil.
45-minute mark... Finally, it was looking a bit smooth...
After about 50 minutes of processing. Even though it still looked a little gritty, I settled on this texture and called it 'done.' I'm sure other more powerful blenders would get the job done in a flash, but my little guy took much longer than expected. Well, I still love my mini processor. What can I say, it did the best it could. :)
In the end, here were my measurements:
- 1 cup sunflower seeds
- 2 tsp canola oil
- a pinch of salt
With about 1 cup of sunflower seeds, I only got a teeny jar of butter. hehe. I shall try to make this last as long as I can cuz I don't think I'll be making sunflower seed butter for a while to come.
Now the question is, how should I enjoy it? On toast? On apple slices? How do you eat sunflower seed butter?