By the Spoonful

In preparation for Sarah & Nathania's "Favorites" party, I decided to try a new recipe that would combine a few of my favorite things:

Maple Syrup - Almond Butter - Cinnamon - Mason Jars

So, without further adieu, I bring you...

Maple Cinnamon Almond Butter 
**I adapted the nut butter recipe from Edible Perspective.
Ingredients:

• 2c whole almonds
• 5 T real maple syrup
• 1 t cinnamon
• 1/2 t salt
• 1/2 t pure vanilla extract

And here's the how to!

Preheat your oven to 325*F

Measure out your almonds...

and your maple syrup...

and mix them together.  Spread out the almonds on parchment paper (or on a Silpat if you're lucky enough to have one!).  Stick them in the oven for some roasting time.

Bake for about 15 minutes, stirring a couple times through the process.  Once these are out of the oven, I'd recommend using a spatula to scrape the nuts and candy maple from the pan while they're hot.  Let these cool for a couple minutes (3-5 minutes should work).

Put the nuts in the food processor and let them do their thing.  I have an 11 cup processor, and was processing 5 cups of nuts at a time, and I think that was about the max my processor could handle.  Just a FYI to not get overzealous with doubling (or quadrupling!) recipes.  :o)  Let it go for about 15 minutes, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl as it goes.  It may not seem like much is happening but...

The oils from the nuts will get released and start to take on that wonderful spread quality.  Let the nuts process for at least 15 minutes, and if they still aren't as smooth as you'd like, then go ahead and drizzle in some nut oil (such as peanut oil, walnut oil, etc.) to get the consistency you'd like.  

When you're just about to the desired consistency, add in your cinnamon, salt, and vanilla.  I also added an additional splash of maple syrup, just to make it extra maple-y.

 Make sure all the ingredients are mixed together nicely, then voila!  I may or may not have had an extremely difficult time not eating this by the spoonful jar...  Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelicious if I do say so myself!

 An additional plus is that your kitchen will smell wonderful from roasting the almonds in maple syrup.  :o)

I found the "fancy" mason jars at Lowe's (cheapest place I could find them, which REALLY surprised me!).

So here it is, Maple Cinnamon Almond Butter, packaged and ready to go to the party!

I have LOTS of ideas for other nut butters...  I have a feeling that I'm going to go through this almond butter pretty quickly, so I'm sure I'll be back in the kitchen hanging out with my food processor trying out some new recipes in no time! :o)