Homemade coconut butter

I have heard of coconut butter for awhile now, but never really understood what is was. To me, it sounded like a new body cream by Philosophy or Origins. I hopped on the coconut oil craze early on, but admittedly, I'm a bit late to the coconut butter party. I had been meaning to try it, and stumbled across a jar at Whole Foods. For $12. For 8oz! What?? I didn't want to try it $12 worth, so I moved on.
But then one day I was at church with my sister, and by church I mean TJMaxx, when I had an encounter on the food aisle. You know that aisle, where overpriced gourmet foods and davinci syrups go to die. It was there. An 8 oz jar of chocolate coconut butter. For $7.99. Why not, I said to no one in particular. It took me a few months to even open it, but when I did, hallelujah! It was amazing. Smooth, coconutty, chocolaty. It was Delish. And as I do with most things, I googled how to make it And quickly thought "wow. Those people selling this stuff at whole foods are making a fortune off of their profit margin!" Because the ingredient list is short and NOT expensive. All you need is a bag of plain, shredded coconut. NOT the kind you buy at the grocery store that is loaded with sugar, just plain, unsweetened, desiccated coconut.



I had that in my pantry. So I whipped out my Vitamix, dumped the coconut in and turned it on. I used the plunger to push it into the blades and after about 2 minutes it went from coconut to liquid coconut. I kept blending for another 3 minutes. It was smooth, but a bit grainy. Another google search took me to Nam Nam Paleo, and she used a tablespoon of coconut oil in addition, so I tried that and voila, it smoothed it right out. I added some vanilla bean paste, vanilla stevia and cinnamon to it and am now waiting for it to go from liquid to butter. I eat it straight from the spoon when I'm hungry and need something to tide me over. But if you can't handle having something so delicious open and freely available, it could be wise to have a loved one hide it from you. Seriously. Don't say I didn't warn you.