Yet another almond butter question

[fuzzywater]

I have recently discovered the joy of making my own nut butters - I'm hooked. And I've read several posts here on making your own nut butter... Using a food processor and some flax oil has been working quite well for me. However, I just read a post on another forum that says soaking and then dehydrating almonds allows you to make a creamy almond butter without additional oil. Has anybody tried this? How does the final product compare? Anybody try it with nuts other than almonds - say cashews or macadamias?
Thanks!

[tvillemom]

I just made my own almond butter with my ex-coffee grinder and some sesame oil....it kinda gave it that sesame fragrance, but not really the flavor. Is flax oil tasteless??(of course I made the almond butter to specifically use it in Alissa's fudge balls...so the addition of carob and dates may have also helped the flavor) If so, do I have to buy flax oil in the refrigerator section, I've seen it on the shelf before in the pharmacy section....but wondered if this was safe.....I love almond butter, but refuse to buy it when I made some that was suitable for me in a little grinder, and then used a fork to add in the oil.....
Wendi

[BDraw]

I was one that made it by soaking/dehydrating the almonds first. After doing it in my coffee grinder, it was still dry, needed some oil. I used cocoanut oil, tasted yummy, but gets mighty hard in the refrigerator.

I'll try flax oil next time. And yes, it is found in the refrigerator section of a health food store. It must be refrigerated to retain it's freshness, as it can go rancid quickly.

Enjoy!

[tvillemom]

Thanks...I didn't even think of using coconut oil...I bet I could just keep them in the refrigerator if I used coconut oil. thanks again for your input.
Wendi

[Secret Heart]

So you can easily make almond butter then with flax oil and soaked almonds put into the food processor? Does anyone use a specific amount of nuts/oil?

Here I was disparing because I don't have a juicer and thus thought I couldn't make almond butter!!!! Must the flax oil be used by a certain date though? Is there a raw oil that i could use that might last longer than flax? I'd like flax though..I just don't eat almond butter very quickly as it's so rich and I wouldn't want the oil to go rancid.

Heather

[fuzzywater]

The first time I made my own almond butter, I didn't have flax, so I used olive oil. I should think you could use any cold-pressed oil, but from all the ones I can think of off the top of my head, olive is the most stable one.... Just try to use as little as possible, because olive is a fairly strong flavored oil.

Btw, regarding soaked nuts, I haven't had any luck with those.... even one time when I very briefly rinsed some walnuts to try making walnut butter.... seems like ANY amount of water kind of screws with your texture.... (I ended up with a big ball of ground up nut coated in oil.... yuck!) Maybe I didn't dehydrate my almond long enough when I tried the soaked and dehydrated version, who knows? But I seem to get the best results from plain old raw nuts!

Good luck and enjoy!

[tvillemom]

I'm going to try the coconut oil. Also, I soak my almonds, then dehydrate them until they are nice and crunchy. Then I use my little coffee grinder to grind up the almonds. Sounds like alot of work, but when I soaked my almonds, I soaked the whole lb. at one time, then used about 3-4 of my dehydrator sheets to dry them. I have a whole bag of ready to use almonds, and I just took out a cup of them and ground them up, then added the oil until I was happy with the texture! I hope this helps...I don't have a fancy juicer either!! ;)
Wendi