So Laurie, Sarah and Diane finally motivated me to make something myself instead of asking Chris Zimmer or Lawson Kline to make it for me.
But I'm not an exceptionally patient guy, so I wanted to try making almond milk the quick way. It worked wonderfully.
What's the quick way? Using Bob's Red Mill almond flour (which is just blanched, ground almonds) instead of whole almonds. I'm drinking some hot chocolate made with my homemade almond milk as I type this.
What I like about this is that I know exactly what's in my milk: almonds, water, organic vanilla extract, organic agave syrup (and for the chocolate milk, raw organic cacao nibs). Nothing else. Kinda cool. And quite delish.
I looked at a few recipes on line, and took what I liked from a couple of them to make my milk. Mine's very thick and rich, you could easily make it thinner by adjusting the ration of almond flour to water. My recipe:
1 to 1 1/4 cups Bob's Red Mill almond flour
2 cups water
1 teaspoon organic vanilla extract
1/8 cup organic agave syrup
and for the chocolate version: 2 TBS organic cacao nibs
Put everything in a blender. Blend. A lot. I blended mine for 60 sec at the highest speed my blender would blend.
Pour mixture into a mesh nut milk bag (wonderful device!) secured around the top of a container.
Allow to drain for a bit.
Get impatient and start squeezing the rest of the milk out of the bag into the container (but be careful, squeeze too hard and you can rupture the bag!)
Set bag aside.
Drink. Or chill first. Then drink.
Use the leftover 'paste' as a really nice dessert with a bit of honey drizzled over it. Yum!
Some pics:
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The ingredients. That's all there is to it (plus water, of course).
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Draining in the mesh nut milk bag. I made a mess the first time. Found a better container for the second round with the chocolate version.
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The leftover paste. Really tasty as a dessert with honey, especially the chocolate version!
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A nice glass of homemade almond milk! I've got some Bob's hazelnut flour to try next! Might even try it with coconut flour! Anyone know if that might work?
Prost!
(Producer's note: No cuben was harmed in the making of this almond milk……)
