Homemade Peanut Butter!

I go through a jar of peanut butter a week. I’m addicted. I put it on oatmeal, ice cream, rice cakes…anything and everything. And since I prefer natural, the expense can add up...especially if I choose organic or "specialty" flavors! Cost aside, with store-bought peanut butter I don’t have complete control of the ingredients, which would be nice with all the recent salmonella-related recalls.

After much experimentation, I've finally found the perfect peanut butter recipe, and whipping up a batch takes 3 minutes and costs only about $2.50!

Ingredients:

• 16oz dry roasted peanuts
• granulated cane sugar
• salt

Spread 16oz of dry roasted peanuts over a baking sheet, and roast them in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. This helps heat up the oils in the peanuts, making them easier to blend and get super creamy!

Making sure they're still warm from the oven, fill a blender of food-processor with the roasted peanuts.

After 1 minute of blending, the blended peanuts will look crumbly...

Then after some scraping off the sides, and another 1 minute of blending, it will start to look like peanut Play-Dough...

Then, after 1 more minute of blending, the magic happens. It turns creamy. It looks like the smooth, lucious peanut butter. Once it gets to this stage, add in 4 Tablespoons of granulated cane sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt. The salt, strangely, is what really sets the flavor off. Blend for another 30 seconds-1 minute.

That's it! Nice and simple, and better tasting that store-bought in my opinion - without all the extra mystery ingredients. This base recipe is easy to modify using honey, dark chocolate, cinnamon, pumpkin spice, vanilla, gingerbread seasoning...all of your favorite flavors can be turned into a peanut butter now!