Chai Spiced nut butter
- Darrian Wilkins
- Last update: February 20, 2022
After a very busy, but fun week (a visit to the zoo with my nieces, doing some shopping with mum and sis, a fall picnic shoot) I finally made the time to do some baking. What you see here is basically a regular banana bread wearing her (yes it’s a she) Sunday best. That means you have two options. Either you pour the bather in a normal loaf tin, or if you feel like it, go all out and follow the instructions found at the bottom of this blog post. Life is so simple, isn’t it!
But this is more than a blog post with the best banana bread recipe ever. When I do grocery shopping I want my food to be fresh, local, and honest. Why is the latter so important?
Well, it’s not that hard to figure out. When you are doing your job, you want to get decent pay right? So do those hard-working people on the other side of the world who pluck tea, grow cacao or coffee trees or make sure you can have a banana every day of the week.
I feel good when I buy fair trade certified products, knowing that farmers or organizations in faraway countries get fair pay, knowing that my food isn’t grown by children who should be at school and that they live a reasonably good life compared to the people who work at a non-fair trade certified organization or aren’t affiliated with fair trade cooperation.
In today’s recipe I included two products which are easily available fair trade. Bananas from Colombia, and coconut milk from Sri Lanka (+ Brazilian oranges, if you swap the grapefruit). Did you know bananas are the most traded fruit in the world? I don’t know what I would do without them. What is your favorite fair trade product and why? Let me know in the comments!
CHAI SPICED NUT BUTTER WITH HONEY
(makes 3 jars)
You need:
- 2 cups almonds, roasted
- 2 cups peanuts, roasted
- 1 tbsp raw honey
- 1 tsp cardamom
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1/2 tsp clove
- 1/2 tsp ginger
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
How to make it:
- Add the roasted nuts to the food processor. Pulse until the nuts have released their oil and it becomes a smooth butter. This can take about 10-20 minutes, depending on your machine.
- It may seem a few times like this will never work. But it does. The most important thing is patience and dedication. Don’t walk away just see how the nuts slowly release their oil and how the crumbly clump becomes more and more smooth.
- When the butter is really smooth, add the spices. Pulse for just a few seconds and turn of the machine. With a spoon swirl the honey throughout the nut butter. Don’t add the honey to the processor, because that will make your nut butter all crumbly again.
- Scoop the butter into jars and store at room temperature.
Note: I dry roasted the nuts, before adding them to the food processor. Of course you can substitute the peanuts for any other nut. Cashews of macademia nuts would be great too.