Make your own coconut butter--trust me, it's amazing!!

Make your own coconut butter--trust me, it's amazing!!

• 1.27.2014

Every once in a while I do a real food recipe or tutorial, and I got a request for this one after tweeting about how I just figured out how to make coconut butter. And I figured, sure, I'll try it again and take pics and share with you!!

I've honestly never ever ever bought coconut butter, because it's a little pricey and until 4 years ago when I became raw vegan (and then 1 year ago, when I switched to a basically Paleo diet) I had no reason to use it in anything. You may have never wanted to use it, either, but trust me, it's amazing for making tasty, satisfying real food desserts and treats in a snap!

One-ingredient real food recipes

I've talked before about making your own sunbutter (sunflower butter), and I love my DIY almond butter/almond meal is a must-do for a real food household. And husband and I did a great photo tutorial of DIY coconut milk from fresh coconut! So it's time to do another from-scratch one-ingredient recipe, and coconut butter is super duper easy and way cost-effective.

Why coconut butter?

Coconut butter is very different from coconut oil; coconut oil is oil that is extracted from the meat (like olive oil or almond oil). Coconut butter is the pureed meat of the coconut, including the oil and the fiber (like almond butter). It has a much stronger coconut flavor than coconut oil, and the texture by itself is a little mealy. Might take a bit to get used to if you eat a bite plain. Like coconut oil, it is used in whole food desserts, plus curries and other tasty recipes.

While I'd never bought coconut butter before (it's like $9/jar!!) I had tasted some before, but I think it had gone rancid stored in a warm pantry. (If you rarely use it, store it in the fridge to protect it, but it will get pretty hard in there. I store mine in a pantry way far away from the windows and stove. It gets solid when cold.)

We just finished a 21 Day Sugar Detox today (started the first Monday of this month!) and one of the recipes in the book was the Lemon Vanilla Melt-Aways (recipe also online here) (I IG'd mine here). The coconut butter and oil are the base for those. (On the detox we ate no sweeteners of any kind, and no fruit except one piece or less per day of green bananas or green apple. So more than halfway through the detox, fresh lemon juice and coconut butter and oil tasted not sweet, but quite decadent!) So it was time I perfect my coconut butter-making!

Homemade coconut butter "recipe"

It's the simplest thing in the world; it's hardly a recipe. How to:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups unsweetened shredded coconut (full fat; sweetened or reduced fat won't work)

Instructions:

• Put the coconut into your food processor and turn it on.
• Every 2 minutes, stop the processor, open it up, scrape the looser pieces off the sides, and turn it on for another 2 minutes. It will slowly transform! Mine took 12 minutes of processing.
• Store in a cold, dark place.

Yum!! So easy!

It's delicious and versatile! Use it in lots of simple few-ingredient real food desserts like fudge, sauce, flourless cake or brownies (try any of these amazing recipes!)... You can even make flavored nut butters like this amazing chocolate coconut butter. I'd just eat that stuff out of the jar or on a banana or something!

Other great recipes for making your own coconut butter here:

• 10 Tips
• Some FAQs here
• Slightly flavored recipe here
• Photos and tips here 

Try it!