How To Make Sunflower Butter

When you make your own food from scratch, you know exactly what’s going into it. You can choose the highest quality organic ingredients for a healthy product you're not afraid to scarf down. If you’re allergic to peanuts and peanut butter, this homemade sunflower butter recipe is a delicious alternative. You can use it in all the same ways. Spread it on bread and crackers, substitute it in recipes that use peanut butter, melt it over your favorite baked goods and desserts, and any other way you can imagine. This sunflower butter recipe is simple and easy to make. It lasts up to a month or more in the fridge, but it’ll likely get eaten before then!

Sunflower Seed Benefits

Aside from an alternative to peanut butter, this homemade sunflower butter recipe has its own health benefits. Like nuts, sunflower seeds contain healthy fats which can help balance your mood, boost brain power, and even help control your weight. They’re packed with vitamin E, phenolic acids, flavonoids, and selenium which act as antioxidants to protect against free radical cell damage. The magnesium, protein, and linoleic fatty acids found in sunflower seeds also may help lower blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar.

Toasting

A key to this homemade sunflower butter recipe is toasting the seeds. Toasting adds depth to the flavor, but it also helps the butter to form a creamy consistency. Without toasting, you’ll end up with a very powdery substance. When you're toasting your seeds, be sure to watch them closely and mix them often so they don’t burn.

Try Wildly Organic’s Sunflower Seeds for this recipe. You can purchase them in 7oz, 16oz, and even 25lb quantities. They are raw, but also activated through a low-temperature soaking and dehydrating process that unlocks their full nutrition potential. This gives them a delicate crunch straight out of the bag. By starting with our raw seeds, you can control how toasty your seeds get.

Additives

While we like to keep additives to a minimum, a sunflower butter recipe made only with seeds will be a bit bitter. Adding a little coconut sugar and pink Himalayan salt will balance out the butter with both salty and sweet flavors. We also prefer to add a little cold pressed coconut oil because we like the mild additional taste of the nutty coconut. You could choose to use expeller pressed coconut oil if you don’t want the coconut flavor. Or, you can nix the oil altogether. It may just take a little extra time in the food processor to reach that buttery consistency.

Keep Processing

To start, you will be adding your hulled, toasted sunflower seeds to a food processor. It may take about 10 minutes of food processing to get your sunflower seeds to reach the right consistency. First, your seeds will become like a powder. Keep processing and you will get a chunky mixture that will soon form a ball. Process further and your ball will break down into the smooth, buttery spread we’re looking for. Scrape down the sides occasionally to mix evenly. If your food processor gets hot, give it a minute or two to rest.

Uses for This Sunflower Butter Recipe

Like we mentioned earlier, homemade sunflower butter can be used as a substitute for any recipe that calls for peanut butter. Yes, the flavor profile will be a bit different, but we think you will like the results! You can also just eat this delicious and nutritious butter straight off the spoon. While baked goods might be the first thing that comes to mind, you may also want to consider sauces and dips, savory dishes like stir frys and noodle dishes, and as a dressing for salads. Top your oatmeal, hot cereal, and yogurt with it. Get creative! This is a sunflower butter recipe your whole family will love.

Visit Wildly Organic’s blog for more healthy recipe ideas!