Honey Lavender Cashew Butter

Lavender has become one of my most favorite food trends this year. Its flavor is delicious, floral and bright. It makes such a nice addition to other floral fruit flavors like strawberries, peaches and blackberries. I love adding it to baked goods in particular, but it goes very nicely in the already subtle, buttery flavor of cashew butter.

Add a pinch or two of lavender with a dash of salt and honey to your next batch of homemade cashew butter and enjoy it plain or with an extra drizzle of honey or fruit jam.

A couple notes on cashew butter:

• Cashew butter takes a long time to “churn,” almost 10 minutes. Just when you start to think it will never happen, it’ll begin transforming into a delicious, creamy, buttery spread.
• Sometimes when adding liquid sweetener, such as honey or maple syrup to certain nut butters, the nut butter tends to seize up. You’ll know this has happened by the way it takes on a cookie-dough texture, versus a soft creamy spread. I choose to leave mine this way, but you can easily fix this by adding a little coconut oil. Add 1 tsp at a time until you reach the desired consistency.

How to Use Culinary Lavender

First, make sure you are purchasing dried culinary lavender. It is available from many trusted brands you already know, but may be difficult to find in grocery stores. I purchased mine on Amazon.

Generally, the lavender comes as little dried buds, which are highly concentrated with flavor. To create a less intense, uniform flavor, I strongly urge you to grind your lavender buds. You can use a spice grinder, mortar and pestle or even a blender, which is the method I used.

With a more powdery texture, you can add a pinch at a time to a batter or nut butter until you reach your desired flavor without overpowering individual bites of food.

Make a small batch and keep it on hand for future uses.