Toasted Coconut-Hazelnut Butter (+ how to clean your blender in 10 seconds)

If one of my friends orders an ice cream flavour I was considering, even if I wasn’t dead set on getting it, I suddenly become slightly angry that they’ve ordered it because now I have to get something different (I don’t like to have the same things as other people in certain situations too).

This happened in a weird way the other day when I managed to sabotage myself.

I had used up most of my hazelnut butter on the filling of these delicious things – and as I was scooping it out of the jar, I was silently starting to panic. Seriously, ‘I’m running out of hazelnut butter, what the heck am I going to do!?’

It’s not even like I’ve been addicted to it or anything, it has literally taken me 5 months to eat this one, tiny jar of it. But I was just freaking out about the fact that I wouldn’t have any more.

I realised I could just make some myself – but then started thinking about how many other people have a recipe for hazelnut butter on their blog.

REAL TIME UPDATE: Okay a huge fly-that-I-thought-was-a-bee just flew in front of my computer screen, and I majorly jumped. Man! Talk about scary-and-a-half!

Anyways, as I told you, with certain things (especially food) I don’t like to copy other people. So halfway through making hazelnut butter, I just thought ‘Well coconut is pretty tasty, I can add some in and make it a coconut butter too. Actually, I’ll even toast the coconut so there’s more coconut flavour.’ which is how the most delicious nut butter ever was made, it’s even spreadable straight from the fridge!!!

(p.s. if you find some other recipe posted before mine for  a Toasted Coconut-Hazelnut Butter, can you just leave me in my unembarrassed ignorance? What you don’t know, can’t hurt you and make your brain laugh at you all night)

Now, you may be thinking, ‘how the heck can I come up with some magical way worthy enough to get this coconut-hazelnut butter into my face?’ (except on toast, apples or with a spoon). Oh, have I got you covered man; I have some recipe-cards (ha, unintentional pun now intended) up my sleeves coming soon…*

Ooh, ooh, one more thang: are you super annoyed when having to clean blenders and other Indiana-Jones-esque machines? YOU CAN TOTALLY CLEAN IT WITHOUT HAVING TO STICK YOUR HAND INTO THAT DEATH TRAP, and it only takes a few seconds to do. Its a win-win-win sitch:
easy, delicious nut butter, no cut fingers, clean up extra fast.

Hoorayyyy! Read the text below the typed recipe (after the break) to find out how!

* Check out these Banana, Honey and Toasted Coconut-Hazelnut Butter Crostini with Fleur de sel

Toasted Coconut-Hazelnut Butter

3 cups (16.5 oz / 460g) hazelnuts
1 cup (3.5 oz / 85g) unsweetened desiccated coconut

Preheat your oven to 250 degrees F, and spread the hazelnuts out on a large, rimmed cookie sheet. Toast the hazelnuts in the oven for 7-10 minutes, when they should be fragrant and the skins are cracked and peeling. Let them cool for a little while you toast the coconut:

Put the coconut into a dry frying pan. Stir constantly over a medium-high heat until mostly golden brown, and fragrant (2-3 minutes). Pour straight into a small bowl.

Wrap the hazelnuts in a large clean dish towel and rub together to remove (the majority of) the bitter skins. Put the coconut and skinned hazelnuts into a food processor or blender and blitz on high speed, stopping to scrape down the sides every minute or so, until liquidy and smooth (about 10 minutes).

Pour the nut butter into a glass jar and seal. I like to store mine in the fridge so it doesn’t go rancid, but it takes me a while to eat an entire jar!

To clean your blender, rinse it out a little with some warm water.
Then pour about 1/2 cup (125 ml) of hot water into the blender, put on the lid and put it back onto the machine. Turn it on and blitz for 10 seconds (ish), pour out the water, quickly rinse once more. DONE! (also, if the water is hot enough, it should dry super fast too).