The first recipes in my cookbook Eating for Pleasure, People & Planet are for seed and nut butters. Peanut butter is delicious, yes, but homemade mixed seed and nut butters can be nutritionally superior and just as yummy; they’re also a great way to use up store-cupboard ingredients. In the book I include recipes for hemp, pumpkin and brazil nut butter, homemade “Nutella” and amlou, a Moroccan almond, honey and argan oil spread, and the method for making most if not all of them is very similar.
Get creative, put on your chef’s hat and come up with your own simple combinations using whatever you have available. Virtually all nuts and seeds will work, but, that said, some nuts, such as pine nuts or poppy seeds, are especially intense and can also be expensive, so use those in moderation and mainly to flavour your spread.
