Basic Coconut Butter

http://thehealthyfoodie.com/2013/10/17/basic-coconut-butter/

Posted in: Condiments, Paleo / Primal, Snacks, Whole30

I know, I’m not giving you much of anything new here.
Chances are you’ve probably seen and read thousands of posts talking about this very subject already: the [very simple] art of making all natural coconut butter at home.

You may be wondering: if so many people already covered this, why on earth did I choose to give you yet ANOTHER post on the subject?
Because unfortunately, it seems that a lot of people find it very hard, if not darn near impossible, to get their dried coconut to turn into butter. I’m hoping that this post will convince you that, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth!
Making your own coconut butter at home not only is SUPER easy, but it will also save you TONS of money.
Only there is this one fundamental rule that you ABSOLUTELY have to follow, and that is…
YOU NEED TO USE LOTS OF COCONUT!
If you try and make a batch of coconut butter out of a meager cup or two of shredded coconut, all you will accomplish is send it flying off to the sides of the bowl of your food processor as soon as the blades start spinning, which will have you constantly stop the motor to scrape it back down.
Needless to say that this will get you nowhere fast, except maybe on your way for some terrible frustration. So please, trust me on this one: LOTS OF COCONUT is what you need.

Now, since using LOTS OF COCONUT is the number one rule, the first thing you need to do is get your hands on a great BIG bag of coconut.
Don’t you go and buy just any coconut, though. Of course, you absolutely want to buy unsweetened, but you also want to make sure that your coconut is free of any additives, namely sulfites or sulfates which are a VERY commonly used as a preservative, at least here in Canada.
So check out the list of ingredients and make sure it lists nothing but one: coconut.
The huge bag you see up there I got at my local COSTCO for a measly $8.99. Not bad, not bad at all. Much, much cheaper than what a 2kg jar of coconut butter would cost you!

Alright. So you’ve got your coconut. Now you really want to FILL UP that bowl with shredded coconut. And I do mean FILL IT UP.
Don’t worry about adding too much; shredded coconut is a pretty much like spinach: you start with a gigantic, hulk-esque pile of the stuff and end up with a puny, insignificant spoonful or two…
For this particular batch, I started with 6 cups of shredded coconut, which yielded a little bit less than 2 cups of the finished product.

See? Look at her spin!
By really filling that bowl all the way to the top, the coconut gets to spin ’round and ’round and ’round, and you won’t really ever need to scrape the sides to get it back down to where the action is.
Not only that, but the process will happen quite rapidly, too.
To give you an idea of how fast this goes, I stopped the motor and took a picture every 30 seconds or so…

30 seconds in, the load has already reduced by almost half…

Smelling good already!

Another 30 seconds.

In terms of volume, we’re pretty much at the same place, but the texture has gotten a bit finer and “wetter”, too.

Let’s keep going…

(Oh, and why not scrape the sides a little while we’re at it? Just because, scraping the sides is fun when you don’t have to do it every 10 seconds! )

Another 30 seconds in, the coconut has reduced in volume quite a bit again and is starting to get a nice creamy butter consistency.

I think we need to let her rip some more.

Getting there, big time.

The aroma is intoxicating. I want to stuff my face in that bowl now!

Start the motor once again…

Another 30 seconds down and I think the consistency is getting just about right, now.

But I like my coconut butter really nice and creamy, so I’ll give it a few more seconds…

Ahhhhh, there we have it!

At this point, the coconut butter was creamy enough for my taste.

I decided to add a generous pinch of salt, a generous pinch of true Ceylon Cinnamon, a few gratings of fresh nutmeg and a splash of home made pure vanilla extract. Of course, adding any of these things is completely optional, but I find it gives so much depth and richness to the already formidable flavor of the coconut butter.

And there we have it.

See what I mean by “The Shrinking Spinach Syndrome”? From that whole bowlful that we had at the beginning, we are now down to a very thin (but delicious) layer at the bottom of the bowl.

Now imagine if we’d tried working with 30% of that. It would only have made our lives miserable, and chances are, we wouldn’t  be licking spoonfuls and spatulafuls of warm, creamy, fresh coconut butter at this time!

Time to transfer the fruit of our labor to an airtight container.

At this point, the coconut butter will be fairly liquid because it’s gotten pretty warm from all that blade spinning action.

Just like coconut oil, though, it will solidify even at room temperature. Just give it a day or so to rest, and the magic will happen.

The final consistency of your coconut butter will highly depend on the temperature that reigns inside your home and cupboards.

In the wintertime (or if you keep it in the fridge) it tends to become somewhat hard and crumbly.

In the summertime, however, the coconut butter is very likely to keep a luscious, creamy dreamy spoonable consistency.

That, my friends, could be highly dangerous…

See how easily that spoon goes in?

Oh, be still my heart. Someone please take this jar away from me… I am getting weak at the knees!