Coconut Butter Buttons are a healthy treat for kids and adults made with coconut butter, coconut oil, and honey (or sweetener of choice). They disappear every time I make them!
Coconut butter is my 8-month-old daughter’s favorite food!
All of my babies have loved coconut butter at an early age. I’ve mixed it into banana and vegetable puree and have given it to them right off the spoon! When I’m out and about I like to keep coconut butter buttons on hand as a quick healthy snack for my kids.
This recipe was inspired by my friend Shaye’s recipe, Butter Buttons.
How to make coconut butter buttons
Let’s start by talking ingredients:
- 3/4 Cup coconut butter – here’s how you can make coconut butter yourself
- 1/4 Cup coconut oil – you can also make coconut oil at home
- 1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Bean Powder
- 3 Tablespoons maple syrup or raw honey (Babies under the age of one should not eat raw honey. When I make these for my 8 month old I leave out the sweetener. 1/8 teaspoon of liquid stevia can be used in place of the honey/maple syrup).
And then the recipe itself is really simple. Just:
- Mix all the ingredients together in a food processor or mixer.
- Use a spatula to scrape all the coconut butter off the sides of the bowl.
- Scoop the whole mixture into a ziplock bag.
- Coconut butter and coconut oil will begin to melt at 76°. If your coconut butter mixture is melted you’ll need to refrigerate it for 5-10 minutes so it firms up.
- Cut the tip off one of the corners of the bag and squeeze button size drops of coconut butter onto a parchment or wax paper lined cookie sheet.
- Once you’ve used up all the coconut butter you’ll want to put the buttons into the refrigerator to set up.
- After they’ve hardened you’ll want to remove them from the cookie sheet and store them in a container in the refrigerator or freezer.
Coconut Butter Buttons
- Yield: 1 cup 1x
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup coconut butter – here’s my recipe
- 1/4 cup coconut oil
- 1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla Bean Powder
- 3 Tablespoons maple syrup or raw honey (Babies under the age of one should not eat raw honey. When I make these for my 8 month old I leave out the sweetener. 1/8 teaspoon of liquid stevia can be used in place of the honey/maple syrup).
Instructions
- Mix all the ingredients together in a food processor or mixer.
- Use a spatula to scrape all the coconut butter off the sides of the bowl.
- Scoop mixture into a ziplock bag.
- Coconut butter and coconut oil will begin to melt at 76°. If your coconut butter mixture is melted you’ll need to refrigerate it for 5-10 minutes so it firms up.
- Cut the tip off one of the corners of the bag and squeeze button size drops of coconut butter onto a parchment or wax paper lined cookie sheet.
- Once you’ve used up all the coconut butter you’ll want to put the buttons into the refrigerator to set up.
- After they’ve hardened you’ll want to remove them from the cookie sheet and store them in a container in the refrigerator or freezer.
These are delicious – I am so happy I found your website because I had purchased coconut butter and was trying to find ways to use it. Clever, easy and phenomenal tasting recipe – I did use vanilla bean instead of powder (only because I had none) and they turned out great. Thank you so much for sharing. I think I will try a few drops of mint essential oil to the next batch to see how they turn out. 🙂
Thanks so much, Jennifer! Glad you liked them 🙂
Wonderful recipe thank you! I subbed brown rice syrup for the honey and it turned out great, I warmed the syrup a bit first in some hot water so it would blend better.
Thank you so much for this idea! My daughter is 10 months and is the pickiest eater ever! She won’t eat anything mushy! Bananas, rice cereal, oatmeal, avocado, baby food, she hates them all. She likes solid foods but that’s tricky when you don’t have teeth. So foods that are solid but melt in her mouth are perfect! These fit the bill. She loves them! My older kids love them as well. I added some chai spice to them and omitted the sweetener. Thought about adding other things like: kale powder, spirulina, gelatin, berry powder. Have you tried adding anything else to these? Thanks again for the recipe!
For those who got the recipe to work, did you use virgin coconut oil or refined coconut oil? I’m very excited to try this with my infant who’s about ready to start solids. Thank you!
their are great, even my dog likes them
The zip lock bag popped and spilt entire mixture out wasting lots in the repeated process, I have put the mixture left aside to go and buy a proper piping bag. I have spent ages doing this, valuable time with a toddler. Other than this the mixture tastes very nice.
Nutritional info?
wow! I occasionally want a little ‘sweet’ after a meal, and these will be perfect! I think I’ll experiment and add a drop of wild orange essential oil to the batch 🙂
I make these all the time. Love them!! I have shared the recipe with several others who feel the same about them. Super easy. Super fast. Super tasty. And super good source of healthy fats.
Great healthy recipe! I used Artisan coconut butter and made it with maple syrup the first time. Second time I used about 2 TBL honey in place of maple syrup, and added 1/2 tsp organic mint oil. It’s addictive – tastes a bit like mint white chocolate. Next time I am going to try orange or lemon oil. Thanks for a great recipe!
Just found this web site and so excited to try the coconut butter buttons and some other recipes as I look at this new site
sounds great
Why add the coconut oil? Why not just use 1 cup of coconut butter? If you make it yourself, coconut butter isn’t any more expensive than coconut oil, and maybe even cheaper.
Hey use vanilla beans instead of vanilla extract!!! The vanilla beans add a nice flavor and also helps to keep it from being so water down. Just slice the beans down the middle and scrape the insides out and add it to your mixture. you will be amazed by the difference in the flavor.
For those of you that are having trouble with the gritty/sandy texture and/or separation…
I’ve been making coconut manna for years, and it’s *never* smooth like pudding or real butter, so you can’t expect the texture to be like ‘melt in your mouth’ chocolate-smooth (although the longer one blends it, the smoother it becomes).
BUT when adding the vanilla extract it can definitely cause the whole mixture to “break”…and become separated (which makes it seem even more gritty, and stops it from sticking together).
It breaks because even alcohol based vanilla extract (typically 80 proof alcohol) is about 60% water – and when adding water to a fatty emulsification, the water causes the mixture to break (ask anybody that makes chocolate – even a drop of water can ruin a batch of chocolate).
It helps if one mixes the vanilla in ‘by hand’ as the very last ingredient. But to completely avoid this issue, use vanilla bean or a vanilla sugar.
‘Hope this helps 🙂
Thank you, Kristi! I haven’t had trouble when I make these but others have and I had no clue why. I’ll add a note in the recipe index.
I’ve just made these and got the somewhat sandy consistency. Used 100% organic virgin coco oil…and ground vanilla powder. Still delicious, so I’ve put it in the fridge in a tray and will be giving it a drizzle of dark choc on top to keep it together….
Is it safe to give vanilla extract to a baby? My daughter is 8 months old.
Did anyone get an answer regarding why their recipe didnt turn out good?
So excited to try these! Can they be added to baked things?
Made the buttons and butter for first time and the button mixture separated from oil. What did l do wrong?
These were great as vanilla but we also added ginger to a batch and cinnamon to a batch. All delicious….
may be the reason some people are having trouble with the coconut oil is because some brands of coconut oil have an emulsifier which keeps everthing mixed together. Normally when an oil is mixed with a liquid they separate and don’t mix but with an emulsifiyer it stays mixed together. So when people add in the extra ingredients if there is no emulsifier in the oil there mix will separate and stay mushy. In Australia one of the emulsifyers used is lectithin.
I made these today and they turned out beautifully. I added carob and they tasted so yummy. My mixture was a little runny and it spread when I pipped it but hardened up in the fridge and tasted lovely.
I love the sound of these and as soon as I saw this I had to try those cute little buttons! I made the coconut butter no problem but as soon as I mixed the other ingredients to the food processor to make the button mixture the mixture sort of crystallised. It wasn’t smooth at all and when I tried to pipe it I got a runny oil with a bit of dough-like, grainy mixture. Not attractive at all. Tastes ok but texture not great and definitely not right. What did I do wrong?!! Could it be something to do with the oil? I melted it to get the right measurement but maybe it hardened again when mixed with the other ingredients? Did I not mix it long enough….? Help!
I’m thinking maybe the vanilla (cheap vanilla=high water content) is throwing the recipe off, for those of us who had it turn to gritty mush (just made my first batch, kinda weird right now, trying to salvage it somehow). But I’m thinking maybe its the vanilla some of us are using, you know what they say about water and oil… Just my guess. Maybe I’ll try it again without the vanilla and see what happens, but coconut butter isn’t cheap!
Chance upon this gem today. I used 3/4 cup butter with 1/4 cup coconut oil and they turned out fabulous. Next time I am going to try 1/3 rd each of palm, coconut and butter and may e the chocolate variation. Yum!
What a great idea….sounds yummy and will be doing these soon…. I make coughdrops using one of those tiny cubed ice cube trays…i bet you could pour the softened mixture into that and place in fridg…will have to try that one…thanks again
I just tried to make these today and they didn’t really turn out. I don’t know what I did wrong. I made coconut butter per your instructions, it was smooth and creamy (after 15 minutes). I added the coconut oil, honey and vanilla, and it turned into gritty watery mush. I even tried putting in the fridge for 10 minutes, but nothing could save it. We’ll still eat it I guess – I hate to waste all those nice ingredients, but we’ll be eating it with spoons 🙂
Omg exactly the same thing happened to me! What went wrong I wonder???
Hi coconut mama! How long will the buttons last while you are out & about?
I’m so happy I made these. I read all the comments first … so when I went to put them on the parchment paper and they were like sand I was a little nervous that they wouldn’t turn out. But after I took them out of the freezer they were shiny and smooth and perfect . Thank you so much for sharing this recipe I’m so excited about it .
….Plus I tried making a smoothie with the yogurt, coconut oil and “lemonaide” in the Cleanse…..but the texture it still kinda lumpy…grainy. HEY, maybe I’ll make popcicles out of that! 🙂
Wish you were here to brainstorm with!!! heh
Do you have or would you PLEASE work on a recipe that combines coconut oil and plain yogurt (no sugar…Stevia only…maybe some fresh lemon). I am trying to do a Coconut Cleanse (Dr Fife’s Coconut Cures book), but I am having a hard time with the texture of mixing the two together. I lost 11 pounds in five days and I couldn’t even stick to it 100%. don’t get worried…I weigh 300 pounds…it’s not scarey when we lose that much at one time. I can gain/lose 5 lbs with my period.
If Dr. Fife is correct, I need 3 Tblsp plus 3X aday….and I’m having a bit of a struggle figuring out how to do that. Sometimes the texture of the coconut oil is hard for me to handle. (For the Cleanse 8 to 14 Tblsp. !!!!!!! :-/) THX!
These are so cute! I make something very similar into fudge – I’m too lazy to do the extra step 😉
Sharing this!!
Ok, I blended this stuff for an hour and it never made butter. I stopped and scrapped sides constantly. Maybe my food processor hates me. I couldn’t find the butter locally either. So no coconut butter buttons for us.
I’ve found that using extra virgin coconut oil yields different results than coconut oil that is just labelled “refined”. In most cases, the EV kind is fine, but in recipes like this one, and most desserts in fact, it is far better to use the refined. When I’ve used EVCO, I have also noticed unusual difficulty blending ingredients, and what you found to be “wet sand with puddle” issue. Hope this helps!
Happy Cooking 🙂
What did I do wrong? The homemade coconut butter seemed to be beautiful, but when I added the vanilla, coconut oil and maple syrup, the whole thing changed consistency. It was like wet sand. I put it into a bag anyway, but I couldn’t make cute little buttons–they were chunks of wet sand with an oily puddle around it. I tried refrigerating it for a while, and it didn’t help. Any ideas?
I had the same thing happen and I just decided to roll them out with my hands and all the oil seemed to squish out of them. They still taste fine.
What is the best way to store these? And how long will they last? I can’t wait to try these for my son! 😉
What is the serving size for kids? How much coconut oil/butter is too much for kids or for adults for that matter?
Just made these but added some mint extract and dipped in dark chocolate. Can we say MELT IN YOUR MOUTH??? Thanks for sharing such a fantastic recipe Coconut Mama. The whole family thanks you!
That sounds amazing! Great idea adding the mint and chocolate. I’ll have to try that next time.
I was just wondering how these would be dipped in pure real dark chocolate but adding the mint is the icing on the coconut buttons!
Thanks for your website…I love it! I’m just getting started with the coconut oil and I’m loving the taste and feel it. What is the difference between coconut manna and coconut butter?
They are the same thing, just by different brands. Some brand are called creamed coconut or coconut cream concentrate.
Just to clarify, will Nutiva coconut manna substitute for the coconut butter without any changes to the needed amount of coconut oil? Thanks!
Correct! Coconut manna is interchangeable with coconut butter.