Making Pecan Butter

A few weeks ago we roasted the few peanuts that we harvested from our first peanut crop and made our own peanut butter.  Good stuff.  Hopefully our peanut crop will be a lot larger this year and we'll be able to make more.  We shelled lots of pecans from the trees in our yard and we have gallons of them put up in the freezer for making pecan pies and other delicacies.

We also soak a bunch of them in salted water overnight and then dry them at low heat in our warmer. They make a tasty, healthy, nutritious treat and we just snack on handfuls of them.  We showed you the process we use IN THIS BLOG POST.  Here's some that we have soaking now:

Pecans Soaking

I've seen all sorts of nut butters and figured we'd try to make some pecan butter with our pecan inventory, so I enlisted Benjamin's help.  He loves peanut butter and I figured he'd enjoy making some pecan butter with me. We took 2 cups of the crispy, soaked pecans and put them in the food processor. After about 30 seconds of processing, they looked like this:

Chopped pecans

After about thirty more seconds they looked like they were getting a little chunky and 'oily.'

Beginning to get mushy

About a minute or two later, the pecans were now converted into pecan butter.  With peanuts, you have to add a little oil to make peanut butter.  Not so with pecans.  I scraped down the sides of the processor and we both took a taste.  Mmmm...

Pecan Butter!

Then I got to thinking and wondered what it would taste like if I added a tablespoon of Steen's Cane Syrup?  Tricia makes pecan pies with Steen's Cane Syrup.  So we added that to the processor...

Steen's Pure Cane Syrup

While we were at it, we looked on the spice rack and spied a few more additives.  We added a little cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger, and Kosher salt.

Spicing it up

We turned on the processor for a little while longer and the pecan butter balled itself up, begging to be removed from the processor and put in a jar (and sampled!)

Ready to Eat

I scooped it all out of the food processor and the 2 cups of pecans converted into exactly 1 half pint of pecan butter once we crammed it all down in there with a rubber spatula.

Well, it almost all fit.  The pecan butter that wouldn't fit in the jar, we gobbled up with a spoon.  It was almost like eating pecan pie.

A lovin' spoonful...

I would highly recommend this addictive product.  It's perfectly fine to eat with a spoon, but you can also use a knife to spread it on hot rolls or make a PB&J sandwich (Pecan Butter & Jelly).

Because there's no preservatives in this pecan butter, it's probably best to refrigerate it since nut butters can go rancid.  I don't think we'll have to worry about that happening since this half pint will be gone lickety split!