Cashew Butter

One US cup of cashew butter weighs 256.5 grams. Going the other way, 100 grams is about 0.39 cups.

Also called cashew nut butter, raw cashew butter, creamy cashew butter, ground cashew paste.

TL;DR: Cashew butter weighs 257 grams per cup (1.084 g/mL) based on tight convergence between USDA's composition entry, USDA Branded Foods label data, and independent producer labels. King Arthur does not list cashew butter on their ingredient weight chart, but the number is well-anchored without them.

Cashew butter is ground roasted or raw cashews, typically with no additions beyond salt (and occasionally a stabilizing oil to prevent separation). Compared to almond and peanut butter — the two dominant nut butters in the US market — cashew is a smaller category dominated by Artisana, Trader Joe's, MaraNatha, Justin's, and Once Again in retail. It is less commonly used in home baking than peanut or almond butter, and correspondingly less well-documented in baking references. King Arthur Baking lists almond butter (272 g/cup), peanut butter (270 g/cup), and tahini paste (256 g/cup) on their ingredient weight chart but omits cashew butter — probably a reflection of its lower profile in traditional American baking rather than an indication of variance in the underlying figure.

USDA FoodData Central lists 'Nuts, cashew butter, plain, with salt added' at 271 grams per metric cup (via aqua-calc), which converts to approximately 257 grams per US cup. USDA Branded Foods carries an independent entry for a specific cashew butter product (UPC 857628006002) at the same figure. Artisana Organic Raw Cashew Butter's Nutrition Facts panel lists 2 tablespoons at 32 grams, extrapolating to 256 grams per cup. Three sources — one composition reference, one branded label, one producer label — all land within a gram of each other at approximately 257 g/cup.

The physical position of cashew butter among nut butters is worth noting. King Arthur's almond butter and peanut butter both sit at 270-272 g/cup, roughly 5 percent denser than cashew at 257. Cashews have less fiber than almonds and slightly softer, higher-fat kernels, which produces a smoother and marginally lighter paste when ground. Tahini (sesame paste) at 256 g/cup happens to converge on the same figure as cashew butter — an interesting coincidence rather than a physical rule, since sesame and cashew are compositionally quite different. In practice, cashew butter and tahini can be substituted 1:1 by weight in most applications where texture matters more than flavor, though the flavor profiles are entirely different.

Cashew butter's density is sensitive to oil separation, which happens naturally in unstabilized products stored at room temperature. A well-stirred jar matches the 257 g/cup figure; a jar with a layer of separated oil poured off will weigh slightly less per cup because the remaining paste has lower fat content. Store-bought products often include palm oil or a small percentage of added sugar to prevent separation, which can shift the density by a percent or two but not enough to invalidate the reference.

Practical baker recommendation: use 257 g/cup for cashew butter. Stir thoroughly before measuring to redistribute any separated oil. If you're substituting cashew butter for almond or peanut butter in a recipe, note that cashew is about 5 percent lighter per cup, so a cup-for-cup swap will yield slightly less mass. When precision matters, weigh.