recipes for runners

Recipe for a Spread – Vegan Homemade Almond Butter

Recipes for Runners – Make Almond Butter as Part of a Fuel Snack:

If you do a lot of cardiovascular exercising, this is a good recipe to have. Almond butter can be part of a nice before workout fuel as it contains a lot of protein. Plus the fats in almonds are healthy fats. Simply spread it on a slice of homemade bread, add some banana and honey and you have a simple energy food for your 1 hr plus workout provided you eat it about 30-60 min before you run.

Why Homemade Almond Butter is so much better:

Homemade almond butter is probably one of the tastiest, healthiest choices for a nut spread for your toast. When you make your own nut butter you know what’s in your butter. In this recipe that is natural almonds. Period. Nothing else. In this nut butter there are no fillers, no salt, no trans-fats, no cheap fats or preservatives – all things you will find in many store bought products. And you might not think it, but it is really, really easy to make! Simply follow the recipe below. Once you’ve made your first batch you will ask yourself why you’ve ever bought any nut butter in a store.

When I changed my diet first I simply avoided all kinds of store bought fatty products because I didn’t know what they put in them (like hydrogenated oils for example) nor how they were prepared. Did they heat the nuts during toasting that they became to hot for the healthy oils? So when I stopped eating peanut butter (for they’re relatively high content of saturated fats) I also stopped eating all the other (healthier) nut butters even the expensive ones bought in the health food shop. Making my own nut butter changed everything. I know the butter I make myself complies with the dietary guidelines provided I stick to the nuts that are low in saturated fats. Now eating let’s say a slice of bread with my own almond butter is simply a different way of eating almonds.

This almond butter also is a great basic condiment for other recipes that require some kind of nut spread. Try it with satay dishes and as a substitute for recipes that require peanut butter.

 

Ingredients for 1/2 cup:

1 cup of almonds

Preparation time: 20 minutes

  1. Pre-heat the oven to 350˚F/180˚C.
  2. Spread the almonds out on a baking sheet and toast for 8-10 minutes then set them aside.
  3. Using a food processor blend the nuts until they have a somewhat crumbly consistency.
  4. Continue to run the processor. I tend to scrape down the sides occasionally. You will notice as you run the processor for about 5 minutes the texture will gradually change to a thicker past. It takes a while for the fibres to bread down and release the oils that eventually will give the buttery texture.
  5. Continue to run the processor until the almond butter has the consistency you want. This could take up to 10 minutes in total.

If you like crunchy nut butter remove a tbs of roughly chopped nuts at the very beginning of the blending process and add them back to the butter at the very end.