How to Make Homemade Coconut Butter Easily
This post may contain affiliate links from which I will earn a commission. Learn more in our disclosure.
Homemade Coconut Butter is a breeze easy to make in your food processor or high-powdered blender in just minutes and once you make, you'll wonder where it's been all your life. You only need one ingredient to make it, but there are lots of fun variations to experiment with as well.
It tastes great on its own but there are also loads of ways to use it. Let the homemade coconut butter making begin.
Have you seen coconut butter in recipes and wondered what it is? Or do you use it often and are just tired of paying so much for it?
Either way, you're going to love this recipe.
Let me introduce you to coconut butter and show you how easy it is to make this otherwise very pricey pantry staple for yourself.
Enter your email and I'll send it straight to your inbox. Plus, you'll get healthy living updates too.
What Is Coconut Butter?
I still remember the day that I found out what coconut butter is. I was looking at a recipe that I wanted to make and noticed that “coconut butter” was one of the ingredients. I didn't know what it was, but had to find out.
What I found out first is that it cost a mere $13.99 for a “giant” 16 oz. container on the first website I checked. Wow. Oddly, the only ingredient in that jar was — coconut!
It turns out that coconut butter is just dried coconut that's processed to make a thick butter like nut butter, but it's hard at room temperature.
Coconut butter is useful by itself, but it's used in a low-carb/keto recipes as well.
What's Best for Making Coconut Butter — Food Processor or High Speed Blender?
The high-speed blender wins hands down and here's why.
The first time I tried making coconut butter, I used a food processor. The post that I got the recipe from said that it should take about 12 minutes of whirring in total.processor. Well, I had a heavy duty processor at the time and could make four batches of Savory Hummus at a time, yielding a creamy smooth product in about 1 minute. So I figured that if any food processor was going to be able to make coconut butter, mine would.
Try as I might, it didn't work well. Now, I've done it since then and so it's possible, but just be careful about burning your food processor out because it can happen.
Meanwhile, making coconut butter in a high-speed blender like a Vitamix (you can also order one on Amazon), is a piece of cake. And though the price of these blenders is a little steep, once you see how much you can make with them, you'll see that it's totally worth it.
How Much Can You Save?
One 16 oz. jar of coconut butter costs approximately $13.99. One pound of medium unsweetened coconut, at the time of publishing this post, cost me approximately $1.75. That's more than an 87% savings.
How to Use
- Spread it on crackers, bread or toast.
- Blended into smoothies.
- Added to hot drinks like coffee, a coffee substitute, or hot chocolate.
- Use in recipes calling for coconut butter, like Chocolate Avocado Truffles and these No Bake Brownies.
- Stirred into hot cereal like oatmeal or Cream of Rice.
- Added to curries for more richness.
- Eat it with a spoon. Our oldest LOVES it like this.
- As a frosting by adding some coconut oil and sweetener to it.
- As a fat substitute in recipes. It does need to be softened first and will make your recipe a little stiffer, but it can work.
- As a substitute for nut butters in many recipes, depending on how much you're replacing and what the recipe is.
- Drizzled on ice cream to make a simple “magic shell” coating.
Storage
Coconut butter keeps really well and will likely store just fine in your pantry for several months. Most likely you won't have it around that long, however.
There is no need to keep it in the fridge, and in fact, if you do, you will have hard time eating it since it gets incredibly hard at low temperatures.
Recipes That Use Coconut Butter
Here are some tasty recipes where you can use coconut butter.
- 3 Ingredient Shortbread Crisp: This really uses only 3 ingredients, and none of them is a packaged mix. Don't those “3 ingredient” recipes drive you nuts when one ingredient (or more) is a boxed mix that has a gazillion ingredients?
- Coconut Butter Fat Bombs: 3 flavors of simple healthy keto treats.
- Chocolate Avocado Truffles: Super easy and delicious. And healthy. You won't believe these are made with avocado!
Recipe Notes
After having trouble with this working sometimes and not working at other times, I have a few tips to help you get PERFECT coconut butter anytime.
- Start with less coconut. This works more consistently if you start with only about 4 cups of shredded coconut. Make that into a butter and then add 1 cup of additional coconut at a time, blending to a butter with the addition of each cup.
- Make sure that your blender is COMPLETELY dry. Even a little bit of water causes the coconut butter to not form properly.
The coconut butter will come out of your Vitamix quite warm and runny, but it will harden up as you let it sit. If you need to speed up the process, just put it into your fridge or freezer.
Your coconut butter will become spreadable around 76 degrees, but you can use a knife or apple corer to get it out of the jar if it's colder than that in your home.
NOTE: Occasionally, for some reason, the coconut butter just doesn't quite work out well. If that ever happens to you, just add a few things to the blender and you can have these fabulous No-Bake Coconut Cookies instead!
Variations
Here are some fun flavors to try by adding the following to the coconut before it's done processing, or after while it's still liquidy.
- Spiced Honey: Honey plus any of the following: cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, ginger, and salt.
- Maple Vanilla: Maple syrup, vanilla extract or vanilla powder, and a dash of salt.
- Chocolate/Cacao: Cocoa or cacao powder and salt. Stir in some cacao nibs after processing for a chocolatey crunch.
- Nutty: Add some nuts to the mix. Anything goes!
- Pumpkin Spice: Pecans and pumpkin pie spice.
- Fruity: Dried fruits like goji berries, raisins, dried cranberries, and more.
- Toasted: Toast the coconut first for depth of flavor and add some salt while you're at it.
Special Diet Notes
For Those With Nut Allergies: Note that coconut is not actually a nut, but some allergy groups classify it as such since it's a food that more people are becoming allergic to. Sadly, allergies are becoming more and more prevalent these days.
More Great DIY Pantry Staples
- Homemade Rice Milk
- Easiest Coconut Milk
- Homemade Powdered Sugar or Powdered Sugar Substitute
- Easiest Almond Milk
- Homemade Sunflower Seed Butter
- Powdered Egg Replacer – works amazingly well in most recipes that call for eggs.
Easiest Homemade Coconut Butter
Ingredients
- 7 cups unsweetened shredded coconut (approximately 1.25 pounds)
- 1 teaspoon coconut oil (optional for blending ease)
Instructions
High Powered Blender Instructions
- Put the coconut (and coconut oil, if using) into the Vitamix (or other high-powered blender). Of course, you can try to use less. I just found that this is a great amount to get it blending well in the Vitamix to produce a wonderful consistency quickly.
- Turn the motor of your Vitamix on and quickly work the speed up. Run the machine on High while using the tamper to keep the coconut moving through the blades (or follow directions for your blender)
- Run the machine on high for about 1 minute.
- After a brief rest, process the coconut on High again for up to 1 minute until it is of the desired consistency.
- Pour into a glass jar for storage.
Food Processor Instructions
- Put the coconut shreds (and coconut oil, if using) into a food processor.
- Turn the food processor on and process until the shreds make a butter, taking breaks as needed for the machine to cool.
Notes
- Start with less coconut. This works more consistently if you start with only about 4 cups of shredded coconut. Make that into a butter and then add 1 cup of additional coconut at a time, blending to a butter with the addition of each cup.
- Make sure that your blender is COMPLETELY dry. Even a little bit of water makes things problematic.
Nutritional information is provided as a courtesy and is merely an approximation. Optional ingredients are not included and when there is an alternative, the primary ingredient is typically used. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of the nutritional information given for any recipe on this site. Erythritol carbs are not included in carb counts since they have been shown not to impact blood sugar. Net carbs are the total carbs minus fiber.
Can’t wait to try your recipe! We love coconut butter & it’s so expensive to buy!!!
So glad to hear this! How do you use it? It’s a fortune. Do you have a Vitamix?
Looks easy. Will try tomorrow. Thanks
Hope it works well for you! LOVE how much money it saves :). Let me know if you need help at all!
I have a vitamix and everytime I make the coconut butter, it does not turn out. It’s usually dry pasty like. This time it is very dark, like It got burned because of the heat in the vitamix. I used flakes of coconut about 7 cups because I think I didn’t use enough the first time I tried.
Not sure what I am doing wrong, but that is a waist of a lot of coconut.
Gosh I’m so sorry – I should make a video of me making it. Did you start out w/ 4 cups as mentioned in this post? Let me know if you tried that–we’ll figure it out.
Was it burned or just toasted?
I started with 4 cups just till it broke it up a lot then added the other 3. I should also mention we started with fresh coconut from our trees, washed, used a peeler to have even slices of coconut and dried them till crisp. We left the brown layer on the coconut for half of them.
I don’t think it burned, but maybe just toasted.
My husband said it tastes good. I was just hoping for mor white.
Thank you for getting back to me!
You are so welcome. Without seeing it, I can’t say, but if you have brown on the toasted coconut that you use, there is no way that the resulting butter will be white. The brown will be there no matter what. Likely what you have is exactly how it should have been.
If you try with only white coconut you should get what you are looking for :). Enjoy!
P.S. I am wishing I lived nextdoor to you so I could have fresh coconuts from trees!
Thank you! I will try again another time without the brown on it.
We just moved to Belize and it is wonderful to have all this fresh fruit!!
You are so welcome. Wow amazing! Where were you before moving?
We were in Northern Alberta Canada. Traveled to Belize for holidays for about 10 years. Now are retired here.
It’s great!!
I am new to your site and will check out more of what you have.
Thank you for great information!!
Oh wow….so interesting! I hope you enjoy it! So tempting! Have you found any real difficulties there or is everything good? Feel free to email if you’d prefer – adrienne at wholenewmom dot com.
Can I use tried or wet coconut pls
Dried only. Hope you like it!
I tried it and it was a success. Thank you!
So glad–isn’t it the best??? My oldest makes this himself now — all the time!
Thank you for the recipe, I’ve never even heard of coconut butter, let alone tried it, so I can’t wait to give it a go. I have some desiccated coconut left over from making a coconut cashew butter the other day so now I have a great way to use it all up. Thank you!!
You are so welcome and I hope you like it! Please note the instructions to start w/ a smaller amount. More to come–I’m working on other flavors :).
Hey Wild Woman! More great tips!!
I tried making mine in the food processor first also but it was too gritty for me. Did take about 20 mins total and yes with about 4 cups to start… cuz I only have a 4 c processor 😉 But I was not worried that it was over working… I thought that is what it is made for.
So after the processor is done with it, I move it into my nutri bullet for finishing to reach creamy perfection!! Just takes another minute in there. My vita mix is too big and tall to stay on counter and too heavy to bring out except for party batches of choc coffee protein smoothies 😉 as a rule.
I have been blessed the last couple of years to find organic coconut butter (not past freshness date) at local discount store so I haven’t had to resort to making it and am quite spoiled at this point :-/ I use a lb a month for sure. In coffee and by the spoonful too 🙂 Make several kinds of candies that have no sweetener at all; with dark cacao coated coconut butter and essential oils. Peppermint patties and chocolate covered orange being favorites. Though I add some lemon oil along with the orange for a well rounded orange flavor. Also make some without choc for a friend that can’t have it and they turn out like inside of a cup of gold kinda… use sprouted sunflower seeds along with some other stuff for those. She is very grateful and loves them! TY again for all You do for everyone.
That is SO funny that you called me that. I have a small “poster” from my college years when my housemates hung these things ALL over campus on my birthday with photos of me saying “Wish this Wild Woman a Happy Birthday!” It was pretty weird seeing these all over — and it was a large campus!
I’m not sure what you mean by your Vitamix being too big to stay on the counter….oh I know. You don’t want to leave it there. How about putting the base out and put the container somewhere else?
I would love your recipes–they sound great! If you care to share you can feel free to email me – wholenewmom {at} gmail {dot} com. Thank you!!!
It seems that your recipe is no different than a DIY coconut oil recipe that I have read…..is there a difference?
Hi there. It’s totally different. DIY coconut oil is not something you see much at all- it’s only the fat. Coconut butter is the coconut meat in its entirety. Hope that helps–happy to answer any other questions.
I just love your recipes. Great work, thanks for trying to keep us all as healthy as we could.
Can I substitute desiccated coconut instead of shredded ?
Adrian
Thank you so much! (nice name, by the way).
By shredded I meant dried and shredded. Enjoy!
I have tried a blender and food proccesor and didnt succeed. So I tried my Mom’s Vitamix still no joy. Glad to read your update was very frustrated when I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t work. I’m going to try again next week. With a different brand of coconut flakes and a smaller amount. Keeping my fingers crossed. ?
Hi there. I think the update will help you!