Home Made Sugar-Free Vegan Nut Butter

I love peanuts butter. I always loved it since when I was a child. In Japan, I remember eating my breakfast western style ( which was toast and pot of tea), I quite often had butter and peanuts butter. The peanuts butter I used to eat was not like proper nut butter, now I look back, it was more like sweet peanuts flavour creamy spread. So, when I first came here and had unsweetened crunchy peanut butter, I did not like it at all. I really missed my Japanese peanut butter. That was looooooooong time ago. Now, I love unsweetened both crunchy and smooth nut butter. I just can't seem to have enough of it. 

I went through peanuts butter, almond butter (also white almond butter), pumpkin butter, cashew butter, and my favo one is hazelnut and chocolate butter, you name it . I love spread them on my corn cakes/rice cakes etc, I could eat whole packet! But keep buying them becomes expensive ( as I'm on budget every month), as they usually come in small jars apart from peanut butter. And, hard to find sugar-free, vegan chocolate nut butter..... 
Then, one day, "Charity shop Emma " (I know quite a few Emmas, each of them have names) told me her mate in South Africa used to make her own peanut butter, that got me thinking. Up till then, I didn't really think to make my own. Funny that, I used to make my own chutneys, jams, and mustard, I also made home made salad cream and tomato ketchup! Why didn't I think that before!

So, I looked into it, I was surprised how easy to make!
My first nut butter was: "Brazil nut butter"
It was very easy, all it had was 500g brazilnut (not roasted) and pinch of salt. I wanted to make as raw as possible, so, I didn't roast the nuts as most of recipes was roasted (and on YouTube).

This is how it started off after 10-12 mins. 

About 15mins grinding in my little food processor, it became runny and creamy. To finish off, I added pinch of salt to bring out flavour of the nuts. I didn't add any sweetener not even maple syrup or coconut sugar. I think some nuts are already naturally sweet, I felt it didn't need.

I put it into a container, after a few days, this is how much it was left. And it was kept in my fridge, so it was set. I didn't cover oil on top either,  Brazil nuts contains high amount of oil, didn't need it.

Now, after success of this butter, I was ready to make chocolate spread. 
Some YouTube video I watched, people were adding oil to hazelnuts while grinding. I didn't understand why. I tried first time with my funny idea/recipe in my head, and didn't succeed. Then when I made it for 2nd time, I realized why they were adding oil. It didn't get runny like brazils! Oil helps to "puree" better. So, does it mean it's less oilier than brazilnuts??? 

Anyway, my sugar-free vegan hazelnut and chocolate spread contains: raw hazelnut, grapeseed oil, raw cacao powder, alcohol-free vanilla extract, and coconut sugar. I didn't make it too runny, I quite like thick spread, so I didn't add too much oil.

While grinding, this is how it looked when I started adding oil to it, many times, I needed to open the machine and scrape the sides and motor running again till quite smooth paste.

Took me about 20mins or so, longer than brazilnuts. Since I made this, I can't seem to stop eating it. That's O.K, this is a guilt-free chocolate spread(to me)! (..although full of nuts/fat..but good fat...)