This quick + easy homemade peanut butter is made with a special step: the peanuts are roasted with maple syrup to get sweet and caramelized before grinding into a thick, sticky, perfectly salty-sweet homemade peanut butter with a kiss of maple sweetness!
PEANUT BUTTER LOVERS, UNITE!
Today we’re making homemade peanut butter, but with an extra special twist: instead of plain ol’ peanut butter, or honey roasted peanut butter, we’re making maple roasted peanut butter.
Maple syrup adds a rich, complex, caramel-like sweetness to peanut butter that I find absolutely irresistible. I don’t want to sound overly bold or anything, but this might be the best peanut butter I’ve ever made!
Like, stop what you’re doing, buy some peanuts and maple syrup, and make a batch…right now!
Sorry to be pushy, but I really think you need this peanut butter in your life. It’s perfect for spreading on toast and sandwiches, slathering on pancakes or waffles, swirling into oatmeal, filling homemade peanut butter cups, smearing on top of brownies before you eat them (just me?), eating by the spoonful, and spreading everywhere else you might want some subtly sweet peanut butter in your life.
Let’s chat about peanuts for a minute, shall we? I first shared a picture of maple roasted peanut butter on my Instagram stories a few weeks ago, and was instantly inundated with messages from people who, 1. wanted the recipe, ASAP, and 2. wanted to know where I found high-quality peanuts, since most grocery stores just have the little tins of snacking peanuts, not peanuts ideal for roasting and peanut butter-ing.
Well, it turns out, I was having the same crisis. I found it difficult to source high quality raw/unroasted peanuts on a consistent basis (even online!), and thus, it wasn’t worth the effort to make my own peanut butter…even if I had cracked the code to the most perfectly roasty, maple-sweetened peanut butter.
So, I decided this homemade peanut butter wasn’t destined to be put on my website, since my goal is to make healthy food easy and accessible to everyone. If you can’t easily source one of the ingredients (the main ingredient, no less), what’s the point? I didn’t want to post a recipe just for it to sit here, unused.
But that all changed last week when I found myself, yet again, doing some serious Amazon searching for peanuts, and stumbled upon a company selling 5-pound bags of raw, blanched, organic, American-grown peanuts…for under $20!! I instantly bought a bag and got to work.
THESE ARE THE PEANUTS I BOUGHT (<–affiliate link), and I could not be happier to have finally (finally!!) found a way to make all my homemade peanut butter dreams come true.
If you have a natural food store in your town, you might find similar peanuts in their bulk aisle (some Whole Foods’ carry them, too, but the ones nearest to me don’t!) but I am seriously obsessing over these ones I found on Amazon.
The only other things you’ll need to make this Maple Roasted Peanut Butter, besides peanuts, are maple syrup, sea salt, and a food processor or high-powered blender. I’ve made this in a Cuisinart Food Processor, my Classic Vitamix Blender, and my new Ninja Chef High-Speed Blender, and had success with all three (<–affiliate links).
Simply roast the peanuts with maple syrup, pour them into your blender with salt, and blend until thick and creamy.
If you’ve never made your own peanut butter before, now’s the time to start! This Maple Roasted Peanut Butter is perfectly golden and roasted, subtly sweet from the maple syrup, and just absolutely perfect in every way. Make a batch for yourself, or pack it up in a mason jar with a ribbon and gift it to the biggest peanut butter fan in your life. Trust me, they’ll love you forever.
If you make this recipe, let me know how it turns out! Leave a comment below, or take a picture and share it with me on Instagram! I love seeing my recipes in your kitchen!
- 4 cups raw, skinless and/or blanched peanuts (organic if you can find it!)
- 1/2 cup maple syrup
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.
- 2. Pour peanuts and maple syrup onto sheet pan, and use a spatula to toss them together. Flatten the peanuts out into a single layer.
- 3. Roast for 20-22 minutes, or until peanuts are a light golden color and maple syrup is completely dry. Remove from oven and let sit 5 minutes to cool slightly, then transfer the peanuts, still warm, to the bowl of a food processor or high powered blender. Add salt to the peanuts, then blend.
- 4. If your blender has a 'nut butter' setting, use that. Otherwise, blend on high using the tamper attachment in your high powered blender until thick and creamy, or pulse in a food processor until the consistency of cornmeal, then blend on high until thick and creamy, stopping to scrape down every minute or so, as needed. Depending on the power of your machine, this could take anywhere from 2-3 minutes to 8-10 minutes. Taste and add more salt, if needed, to suit your tastebuds.
- 5. Transfer nut butter to a 16-oz glass jar and let cool completely before screwing on the lid (to prevent any condensation). Store cooled peanut butter in the pantry for up to 6 months. Just like any all-natural peanut butter, prolonged storage will cause the natural oils in the peanuts to separate; if this happens, just stir well before using!
- Roasting the peanuts with maple syrup is an essential step to this recipe, as it lets the liquid evaporate from the maple syrup. Do NOT add liquid maple syrup to the blender with your peanut butter, as it will cause it to seize. If you taste the finished peanut butter and find you'd like it sweeter, I recommend adding a granulated sweetener (such as sucanat, coconut sugar, or organic cane sugar) one teaspoon at a time until your desired sweetness has been achieved.
- Blending the peanuts while still warm makes them slightly softer, thus easier for your machine to break down into butter, so don't let the peanuts cool more than 5 minutes before blending! If your machine is struggling to turn the peanuts into butter, I recommend adding 1-2 Tablespoons of virgin coconut oil to the peanuts to help them break down more easily. For the peanut butter in the photos, I did not need to add any oil and found it to liquify quite easily on it's own.