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?