Hello! Happy Thursday! Do you have any exciting plans for the weekend?
Glad that you all enjoyed my Jay Robb brand loyalty.
Since that post was, in itself, a little nutty, I can’t think of a better way to introduce our next Guest Bender. Deb is a master at making nut butter — in fact, I was given the chance to try it out for myself back when we met in December. In a word, it was delicious. I hope you try out her recipe below!
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Lower Calorie Almond Spreadable Goodness
I’m Deb from Smoothie Girl Eats Too and I LOVE nut butters. I make them and and eat them and love them. I do not, however love the calories in them. And sometimes I need a thinner version of nut butters, but not as thin as PBU.
So I decided to tweak some almond butter and came up with the following recipe for nut butters that are creamy and spreadable with a slightly lower calorie count than straight-up nut butters. The secret? Thin with a liquid, then make it creamy with coconut flour and guar gum.
Ya think I have enough measuring spoons?
Here is the recipe for what I am calling Nut Butter Silk, and in this case: Almond Silk:
- 1 Tablespoon Almond Butter
- 1.5 Tablespoons water
- .5 Tablespoon Coconut Flour
- 1/8 tsp Guar gum
- (optional almond extract)
- (optional stevia)
Mix together the water and coconut flour to make a paste. Add the rest of the ingredients. Let sit on the countertop for a few minutes for the guar gum to stabilize the mixture and get thicker.
This batch turned out a bit thick. You can thin to desired consistency with your liquid of choice.
Incidentally if you want to go all chemical on me, you can substitute the water for sugar-free Torani or Da Vinci syrup in any number of nut flavors. The possibilities are endless.
Spread on apples, bananas, crackers etc. Or use as a sauce for drizzling or dipping.
This recipe makes one portion and has 125 calories. Enjoy!
Q: Do you have any creative ways to “thin” nut butters? I know that PBU is quite popular!
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I’d love to hear your answers to Deb’s question above! Do you ever use alternative nut butters?
Perhaps you recall from last year my obsession with PB2 — I haven’t had any in quite some time and definitely miss it. You can check out some of the ways I used it by clicking here, here or here. I think I’ve just convinced myself to order some…ruh roh!
Hope you have a lovely Thursday!
Abrazos!
I usually just heat them up so they’re gooey… but I’m a weirdo 🙂
Sometimes I mix my almond butter with pumpkin or pumpkin butter–but that’s more for the flavor than to “thin” it:)
I need to find me some coconut flour–I’m all for coconut anything!
This is pretty cool! In the past, I used to mix peanut butter with FF cream cheese, but now I just try to eat in moderation 🙂
What a great idea! I’ve always wanted to try PB2 which is a similar idea….
I see the words “nut butter” and I just perk up! Your recipe looks good 🙂 Sometimes I like to mix PB with yogurt, but like BroccoliHut, it’s more for the flavor.
OOOOoooooh, Deb, this looks brilliant!! I almost have all the ingredients… wonder if there’s anything I could sub. for the coconut flour. It looks great on those apple slices!! 🙂
I’ve never even THOUGHT of doing this. Wow!!!! How I wish I would have though since I can sit down and eat half a jar of nut butter at a time. With this my 1500 calorie “snack” would only be 750! Yippee!
This recipe looks great! I like to add honey to my nut butter to make it extra sweet and gooey.
[…] Deb’s Lower Calorie Almond Butter – Via Eating Bender […]
Yay, I love Deb and all nut butters, whether thick or thin. Anything made from nut butter just makes me happy. 🙂
This looks great! I’m going to a birthday party tomorrow afternoon and wondering what I could bring that could be healthy and sweet (there will be cake too, but I’m not having any). I think I’ll mix up some creamy almond butter as dip and slice up some apples to go with it.
Wow you girls have lots of great ways to “thin” out nut butter! Honey, pumpkin butter, cream cheese, yogurt! Nom!
Em- the coconut flour gives it a creamy mouthfeel that I like. Probably from the higher fat content. But you could experiment with other “stuff” 🙂 Whole wheat pastry flour???
THanks girls for reading, and thanks, Jenn for having me go a guestie on your great blog!
This idea is genius! I just tried it tonight. I love almond butter but was eating too much of it and so this was both timely and really helpful for me! Thank you! This has been my week of discovering coconut produts — I just tried coconut butter for the first time on Wednesday and am a huge fan and am loving the coconut flour!
Deb, Almond Silk…what a fantastic name. Our beloved Justin should hire you to name all of his products!
Seriously though, I love the idea of thinning out a nut butter to make it go further. I see many nut paste creations, especially if you wanted to get down and dirty with sugar-free syrups, etc! Oh, the possibilities!
[…] almond butter. I decided to make an almond butter “dip” based on Deb’s recipe featured here. My mix was not so sophisticated though, just 1 T of almond butter and 1 T almond milk, mixed […]
Ooh I never thought to thin my nut butters…I just love them as they are, but food for thought 🙂
[…] a quickie post to let you know that I did a guest post for Jenn over at Eating Bender of a rather nutty nature. I had the opportunity to meet her over a […]