Walnut Butter

Here’s how to make homemade walnut butter! It comes out creamy and subtly sweet, ideal for spreading on toast, oatmeal and more.

Got walnuts? Here’s a great way to use them: Walnut Butter! This homemade nut butter comes out lusciously creamy, flavored with cinnamon and vanilla. In fact, we like it better than peanut butter! It’s fast and easy to make at home with a food processor. Harvest all the healthy fats of these superfood nuts in this tasty recipe. There are just a few tricks to making your own jar of this creamy spread. Here’s what to know!

Want more ideas for walnuts? Try these 10 Tasty Walnut Recipes.

How to make walnut butter

Making nut butter at home is very simple, with just two basic steps. This is the base recipe we use for Almond Butter, Peanut Butter and Cashew Butter, with a few tweaks. Here are the two steps (or jump to the recipe):

• Step 1: Toast the walnuts! All you need is 5 minutes in a 350 degree oven. This does two things: it brings out the flavor of the nuts, and helps them to blend better.
• Step 2: Blend! You’ll need a food processor for this step. Throw in the roasted nuts and process for several minutes until they form a creamy butter. The nuts go from dry to sticky to creamy in just a few minutes. Then flavor the butter with sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and salt.

Sugar is required with walnuts

Here’s one important thing to note about walnut butter! All of our homemade nut butter recipes have no added sugar except this walnut butter recipe. Here’s why:

• Walnuts have a very bitter flavor due to the tannins in their skin. While you can remove the skins from walnuts after toasting them, we found it was easier just to add a little sugar to the walnut butter.
• Use any solid sugar you like. We used brown sugar, but you can use granulated sugar or your solid sweetener of choice. Just don’t use a liquid sweetener like honey or maple syrup: it changes the texture of nut butter and can cause it to seize up.

How to store homemade walnut butter

Usually we store nut butter in the pantry, but nuts like pecans and walnuts last better in the refrigerator. Because this walnut butter is ultra creamy, we don’t mind storing it in the refrigerator because it doesn’t get too thick to spread.

How long does homemade walnut butter last? Store walnut butter refrigerated for up to 1 month. If you’d like to keep it in the pantry, store it for 1 or 2 weeks. (Ours usually lasts about 1 week because we eat it so fast!)

Ways to serve walnut butter

Now the fun part: how to serve walnut butter! You can use this creamy spread in the same way you use any other nut butter. It adds an intriguing flair because the flavor is unexpected. It’s great for adding a fall and winter flair to your breakfasts. Here’s what we like to do:

• Toast: Slather on toast and enjoy!
• Oatmeal: Try it on Classic Oatmeal, Banana Baked Oatmeal, or Overnight Oats
• Pancakes: Add it to Banana Oatmeal Pancakes, Fluffy Almond Flour Pancakes, Lemon Blueberry Pancakes or Applesauce Pancakes
• Muffins: Slather a bit on Applesauce Muffins or Blender Muffins
• Waffles: Add it to Perfect Waffles, Pumpkin Waffles, Gingerbread Waffles or Strawberry Waffles

More nut butter recipes

This concept works with any type of nut! Try all our nut butter recipes:

• Go for Easy Almond Butter
• Try Pecan Butter, Cashew Butter, or Pistachio Butter
• Learn How to Make Peanut Butter
• Add any nut you like in this Mixed Nut Butter

01

Easy Almond Butter

02

Pecan Butter

03

Homemade Cashew Butter

04

How to Make Peanut Butter

This walnut butter recipe is…

Vegetarian, vegan, plant-based, dairy-free, and gluten-free.

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