5 Days of Sweet Toasties – Day 4: Cherry Bakewell Toastie

These toasties seem to be getting sweeter as the week goes on. Sugar addiction much?

Check out days one, two and three; can you see the pattern emerging there?

I mentioned in Tuesday’s post that I’m not a peanut butter lover. So I decided to have a go at making my own nut butter.

I used honey roasted almonds, and basically whizzed them up in my food chopper until they turned to almond butter. That’s all you need – one ingredient! You do need quite a few almonds to ensure you’ve got enough volume in the food chopper, but it keeps well in the fridge.

And you know, I actually quite liked it. It still had that ‘stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth’ thing going on, but not as much as regular peanut butter. It’s that element that usually turns me off, so the toned down version worked for me. The addition of the dried cherries added a touch of tartness, and then the icing and almonds, well, I was obviously just making it into cake for breakfast. Guilty as charged.

If today’s breakfast is starting to look like dessert, just wait for tomorrow’s. Hmmm what essential sweet breakfast spread have I not used for this series yet……..

Cherry Bakewell Toastie (serves 1)
Ingredients:

• 140g (2 small packs) honey roasted almonds – I used Blue Diamond almonds
• 100g sieved icing sugar
• Water
• 1 English Muffin (preferably an English oven bottom muffin, but if you can’t get these, then any good quality large soft roll will do), sliced in half
• 2 tbsp dried cherries
• 1 tbsp toasted almond flakes

Method:

1. Start with your almond butter.  Place your honey roasted almonds into a food processor and pulse until you get a creamy paste.  It will go crumbly initially, but then it will come together after a few minutes to form a thick, slightly grainy paste.  You may have to stop the food processor and scrape down the sides a couple of times to ensure the almonds are creamed evenly.  If you prefer the consistency to be thinner, you can add in a little plain butter/peanut oil/other flavourless oil to loosen it a little.  You’ll probably only need half of the almond butter, but the other half can be kept sealed in the fridge for up to a month.
2. Next make up your icing.  Place the icing sugar in a medium sized bowl.  Add in a trickle of water and mix well, then keep adding water trickle by trickle until you have a fairly stiff icing that can be piped.  Place the icing paste in a piping bag (you can use a plastic sandwich bag – just squash the icing down to one corner, twist the bag and snip off the very tip – note – your icing will need to be a little thinner doing it this way – otherwise it will just break the sandwich bag).  Put to one side.
3. Toast your muffin until nicely browned, then slice each piece in half and spread the two bottom halves with the almond butter.  Sprinkle on the dried cherries and place the top halves of the muffin on top.  Then take your piping bag and ice some swirls or squiggles on top.  Finally sprinkle on a the almond flakes and enjoy!