Can I just say how much I’ve enjoyed my Blendtec since I got it the beginning of January?! I’ve wanted to get a Blendtec blender for a few years now. I’ve seen lots of other bloggers that I love talk about how great it is for making nut butters and coconut butter and even nut flour and have read multiple blog posts by the bloggers I follow that I knew if I ever got one, I wouldn’t be disappointed…

On a side note, I have a small food processor. I’ve tried to use it to make coconut butter and almond butter before. The coconut butter works ok…you just have to stop and scrape down the sides of the food processor a bunch and you have to process it for quite a while before it starts to become creamy. The almond butter never really became butter…the food processor just sounded really angry and got super-hot and never accomplished the task.

The Blendtec Twister Jar takes care of that problem. It is separate jar that is compatible with all Blendtec blender bases and is designed for small amounts of food. It has a special top that you turn while it is processing to scrape down the sides and keep it all incorporated. I stopped it once at 45 seconds to scrape it down a bit (it barely needed it) and to take a picture but then processed another 45 seconds and it was gorgeous. It’s only two ingredients. And it tastes amazing. And it takes less than 2 minutes to process. Can you tell I’m sold?

Here are several reasons I love my Designer Series Blendtec:

1. The blades are DULL…that’s right…DULL. How do they grind almonds into almond buter, you say? Honestly, I have no idea. If you want to read more about why and how it works you can click here, but all I care is that they work! And being they are dull blades, I don’t have to worry about slicing my fingers when cleaning it and scrapers won’t get cut up when scraping out batters and things!

2. The jar/blade is one unit. The blades don’t come apart. At first I wasn’t sure if I would like it. Let me tell you now, I do. I just throw some warm water and a drop of dishsoap in the jar, put the cover on and blend for half a minute, rinse it out and it’s clean! And when there is some residue left on there, you can rub your washcloth around in there without having to be careful of cutting yourself on the blade! So there isn’t any assembly/disassembly when using the blender!

3. The Twister Jar attachment…I’ve used that way more than the actual WildSide Jar that comes with it because most of the things I want to make work awesome in the Twister Jar! (ie: almonds to almond butter, coconut flakes to coconut butter, more almonds to almond butter….you get the picture)

4. It’s not overly large–it fits under my cabinet easily.

5. It’s easy to clean–not just the jar, which I explained the ease of cleaning above, but the base. There’s not really anywhere for food to get stuck in crevices and such. You just wipe it off and away you go!

6. It’s pretty. You can say it. I’m a kitchen nerd. This is my first colored small appliance. I was so excited to pick the “Pomegranate” option!! Don’t worry, you can get black ones (or another fun color like Sea Foam or Chartreuse) it’s just fun to have a red one in my kitchen that has red accents. Each Blendtec model has different color options…the Designer Series 625 has the most fun colors though!

7. It has an EIGHT year warranty…and SEVEN years on the refurbished ones that are $80-$120 cheaper than retail! (Click here to see refurbished options and here to read about their warranty.)

8. It is a family-owned business. Not that if a company is share-owned or whatever it’s not a good company. I just think it’s cool they are family-owned.

9. It’s an American company and they make almost all there components under their one roof! Now THAT isn’t very common in this day-and-age! LOVE this fact. (Read more about this here.)

10. It makes almond butter. Oh, and a bunch of other things! I’m just so impressed it makes this because my poor little food processor would groan and moan and smell hot and practically start smoking when I’d try to make almond butter with it…

11. The possibilities are endless!! I have tried multiple things in it (see list below), but there are lots of other common uses for Blendtecs that I have yet to try such as making HOT soups (say what?!), ice cream, smoothies, and more!

Here are several things I’ve made in my Blendtec (since getting it a month ago):

1. Almond Butter in Twister Jar (recipe follows)

2. Coconut Butter in Twister Jar (recipe to come in near future)

3. Chocolate Coconut Butter in Twister Jar…yeah I’ve made several batches and eaten them with a spoon!

4. White Rice Flour in WildSide Jar

5. Grain-free Bread (recipe also upcoming) which turned out much fluffier than making it in a bowl.

6. Ground Golden Flax in WildSide Jar

7. What’s next? Comment with your ideas!

After using the Blendtec a couple weeks I promptly became an affiliate of Blendtec. You may notice my sidebar ads or links to products in my recipes. These are companies/products I love and because I love them have become an affiliate of them. Being an affiliate means I can share and link to products I love and whenever one of you decides to check-out the product and then purchase it, I get a small kickback. And for that I gratefully say “Thank you to all of you!!”

So without further ado, an easy recipe for Almond Butter in your Blendtec (with before/during/after photos)!

Here’s the Twister Jar all ready to go!

This is during the very beginning of grinding (with the Twister Jar you turn the top to keep the food from sticking to the side–hence my thumb in the picture).

I stopped the cycle shortly after I started grinding so you could see the progress.

And off we go again resuming blending…yep…it’s starting to look more creamy! (There’s my nice model thumb again…not!) You can see the reflection of the “21” in the pic so this is 21 seconds of blending after the pic above of the chopped nuts.

And a little more creamy…

And we are done! Creamy and easy homemade almond butter in less than 2 minutes!

Easy-Peasy Almond Butter

Ingredients:
1 /2 cups raw almonds*
1/4 tsp. salt

Directions:
1. Roast almonds on a pan in the oven at 350 for 5-10 minutes stirring once during roasting and then cool until slightly warm or completely cool. (I’ve actually found it seems to blend more quickly if the almonds are a bit warm still but either will work just fine.)
2. Put the roasted almonds and salt into the Blendtec Twister Jar** and put the Twister Jar lid on. Process on low for a few seconds until the almonds are ground into little pieces.
3. Process on high until smooth and creamy while turning the twister jar lid. (From the start of the grinding to the time it became almond butter it took me a minute and a half!)

*you could just start with roasted and save yourself a step–make sure you check to see if they are salted or not though and leave out the salt if they are

**There are other ways to make almond butter such as using a strong food processor. It will just take more time and more scraping down the sides of the bowl to get it made. My little food processor couldn’t really do it.