Cashew Butter
Make cashew butter with this simple recipe! The trick is to lightly toast your cashews before blending for the best flavor and texture.
Updated by Kathryne Taylor on August 28, 2024
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Have you experienced cashew butter? It is sublime and somehow much more delicious than a handful of toasted cashews. A spoonful of homemade cashew butter tastes like a treat. It’s nearly as enticing as cookie dough, as far as I’m concerned—sometimes, I add a few chocolate chips to achieve the full cookie dough effect.
This homemade cashew butter recipe is easy to make in a food processor. The trick is to lightly toast your cashews before blending for the best flavor and texture. Even then, cashew butter has a more neutral flavor than most other nut butter. It’s quite versatile.
Homemade cashew butter contains no additives like sunflower oil; it’s made simply with cashews and a dash of salt to enhance the flavor. Since it is so fresh, it offers better flavor than store-bought options.
Store-bought cashew butter can be quite expensive—I often balk at the nearly twenty-dollar jars at Whole Foods. Making it at home can cost half as much. We could get into a philosophical debate about time versus money, or make cashew butter in the same length of time. Let’s make some already.
Cashew Butter Tips
You’ll find the full recipe below, but here are some notes and tips before you get started.
Toast your nuts before blending. Warm nuts blend more readily than room-temperature nuts. When I tried making cashew butter with plain raw cashews in my Vitamix, I had trouble blending them and resorted to adding olive oil to make it work. Furthermore, cashew butter made with freshly toasted nuts tastes extra special.
You’re in charge of how “toasty” your cashew butter tastes. My recipe suggests baking them for 10 minutes, which brings out the cashews’ best flavor without tasting overtly roasted. If you would like a greater depth of flavor, you could leave your nuts in for a few extra minutes. Stir them at the 10-minute mark, then keep a close eye one them to ensure that the nuts around the edges don’t burn.
Use a food processor rather than a blender. I love my fancy Vitamix, but I’m on Team Food Processor for nut butter (here’s mine). The food processor takes a few minutes longer but doesn’t require my involvement.
Watch How to Make Cashew Butter
How to Serve Cashew Butter
I love a spoonful of cashew butter from time to time. Here are some more ways to enjoy it:
- Spread cashew butter over toast and add berries (fresh berries, defrosted frozen, or chia berry jam). You could make a lovely appetizer with crostini, plus fresh raspberries and a light drizzle of honey.
- Add a dab to quick breads, like banana bread or muffins.
- Try cashew butter on pancakes. Possibly better than maple syrup.
- For extra protein, blend cashew butter into smoothies, overnight oats, oatmeal, or yogurt.
- For a treat, spread it across a graham cracker and add a few chocolate chips!
More Nut Butters to Try
Please let me know how your cashew butter turns out in the comments. I love hearing from you.
Cashew Butter
Make creamy cashew butter at home! It’s easy in your food processor and much more affordable than store-bought. Recipe yields 1 ¾ cups.
Ingredients
- 16 ounces (just over 3 cups) unroasted shelled cashews
- ¼ teaspoon fine salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Spread the cashews across a large, rimmed baking sheet and bake them for 10 minutes, stirring halfway.
- Let the cashews cool until they’re just warm (not hot), about 10 minutes.
- Transfer the cashews to a food processor. Add the salt. Blend until the mixture is completely smooth and creamy, pausing to scrape down the sides as necessary. You’ll think it’ll never blend, but be patient! The cashews will go from flour-like clumps to a ball against the side of the food processor, and finally, the mixture will turn lusciously creamy. If the mixture gets hot along the way or your machine seems tired, stop and let it cool for a few minutes.
- Let the cashew butter cool to room temperature, then transfer the mixture to a mason jar and screw on the lid. Store in the refrigerator for up to 1 month.
Notes
Change it up: You can create a mixed nut butter by substituting raw almonds, walnuts or pecans for some of the cashews. Toast them all together on the pan.
Nutrition
The information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. See our full nutrition disclosure here.
Looking forward to this recipe, i alway have nuts on hand! Does the recipe work to substitute all the cashews for another nut like almonds or best to use some cashews in the mix?
Thank you!
Hi Nancy! You would follow the same basic procedure with any nut, including almonds. Here’s my almond butter recipe. Cashews blend more easily than almonds, so you’d have any easier time if you incorporated some cashews! (Pecans and macadamia nuts also blend very easily.)
I have been making cashew butter for a few years, now, with some modifications to Ms. Taylor’s method. First, I go to Aldys food store or any food store or order on line and get one of the 30 oz. containers of cashews. Once home, I am ready to mill them into nut butter. I have found that many of the nuts presently store purchased are a bit shy on natural oil that is needed to mill a good nut butter and if the milling nuts are too dry, this will tend to burn up your blender even if it is one of the high powered blenders. These nuts are already roasted and do not need to be heated or reroasted. Proceedure: 1…toss into your blender as many nuts as wished, about half of the 30 oz. container. 2…add about 1 tbs. light cooking oil to the nuts in the blender (by light I mean light colored, light flavored oil, not olive, grape or other oils that have a strong flavor to them.) 3…add a little salt, about 1/2 tsp more or less to taste 4…add about 1/2 tsp sugar to the blender 5…place the lid onto the blender and turn on at the grind speed. As Kate says, the nuts will go through a couple texture cycles as well as get hot, as well as the blender motor will get hot. When the motor gets hot, shut down for a few minutes to allow some cooling. Restart the blender, scraping the sides and continue to mill/grind until one gets the smoothness desired. Taste the butter and adjust salt and/or sugar to desire…blending a few moments until well mixed. My blender is a Pampered Chef which has a tamper that inserts through the top lid, allowing one to tamp down the nuts into the sharp blender blades without touching the blades. I make all kinds of nut butter using any nut or seed available and desired. Three of my favs are cashew, almond and pecan butters. All these butters can be home made at a price much less than store bought nut butters and always better…plus one can control the ingredients in the butters to ones liking. For storage, I keep my ‘extra’ butters in a frig. where they always last a long time…months. It is when they are not refrigerated that the oils get rancid and go bad.
Thank you for sharing your detailed method! If you warmed up the nuts a bit before blending, you might find that you don’t need to add any oil.
I doubt that in as much as the grinding process itself creates measurable heat…enough to easily warm the nuts, even it its early grinding stage. I tried adding water once, but water and nuts don’t mix well. Thank you for replying to my comment.
Looks so yummy in the picture with the berries. What kind of berry jam did you put on top?
Thank you! Those are just defrosted frozen berries. I love them on toast like this! They become soft and juicy when they thaw.
Your instructions were spot on. I used raw cashews I had on hand, had to roast them longer than you did because our oven isn’t calibrated perfectly, but that didn’t affect quality. I let them cool to just warm before blending, as you suggested, and it turned out like velvet after lots of blending in a food processor. Truly amazing just cashews and a little salt — NO oil needed — could come out that smooth and delicious. Just a subtle flavor of cashew, and no icky additives. Thanks for this one!!
Great to hear, Vicki! I appreciate your review.
I am with you regarding food processor vs blender. My vitamix wasn’t cutting it. I love the vitamix food processor it works really well. Costco sells pre roasted cashews either salted or unsalted. It is easy peasy to make it this way. I used to do it in the air fryer, it was surprising how fast the roasting happened so keep and eye if you use it
Thanks, Janine! Is your Vitamix food processor crazy loud? I got tired of the noise, but it’s so handy to use the same base.
It is loud as is the vitamix generally when I make milk etc but I have noise blocking headphones close by. I do like the convenience and it works very well.
Smart!! I wish they could make their machines a little quieter somehow, because wow! It’s too much sometimes.
I’ve made your recipe with raw cashews many times. Delicious and easy! However, sometimes, like today, the cashews don’t blend. They get clumpy and very shiny, and liquid collects at the bottom of the blender. Seems to happen if I let the blender go for a longer period? I hate wasting the nuts! Any ideas?
I’m sorry to hear that! Do you notice if it’s how fresh or old the cashews are or a specific brand?
So easy! Perfect way to use up the rest of my Costco size bag of cashews :)
it worked beautifully. i let it run for an extra ten minutes in my cuisinart and it’s as silky smooth as can be, and it was still pretty grainy before I gave it that last 10 minutes.
perfect recipe.
Do you know if this can be frozen? Thanks
I haven’t tried it, but it may be ok. Let me know if you try it!