Spiced coconut roast cashews

Three meals a day… not for me, I function best on the ‘little and often’ philosophy, always needing a good snack to hand. Often it’s a good old bowl of oats, or some veg sticks and hummous, or sometimes I just crave the sweet kick of these babies! However today I fancied a savoury snack, a few little nibbles to pick at, and what better than nuts. 

Not any old nuts, these are my coconut roasted spiced nuts… oh yeah! 

What- coconut?  Don’t worry, they don’t taste of coconut, this is simple the ‘oily’ medium I’ve used to help the spices stick to the cashews and as a bonus the coconut flesh in the butter  gives a delightful (haven’t said that word in a while!) crumbly powdery coating to the nuts. Coconut is a ‘superfood’ and so it’s a pretty healthy snack too! I’ve used coconut butter over coconut oil as it has more body and I also really wanted to achieve that slightly ‘powdery’ coating which you wouldn’t get to the same degree with regular oil containing no flesh. You can make your own coconut butter here.

So simple to make and endlessly variable, I made three flavours as I just couldn’t decide…..

Recipe: Spiced coconut roast cashews

Makes one smallish bowl.

Ingredients

100g plain cashews (organic if possible)

1tsp melted coconut butter

Spices to taste- see below

Option 1- ground sea salt and black pepper

Option 2- garlic puree or granules  and ground mixed Italian herbs

Option 3- Tabasco chipotle sauce (a few drops!), paprika and cayenne pepper

(as a rough guide use a total of 1 tsp of combined spices per 100g of cashews)

Method

Place all ingredients into a mixing bowl and swirl with a spoon or hands until well coated. Lay out on a parchment lined baking sheet and roast in the oven at 180C for approx. 8-10 mins until beginning to go golden. Keep a close eye on these and they have a tendency to go from ‘done’ to ‘overdone’ very quickly!