Creamy Almond Milk

So I'm currently on a four week personal challenge of sorts (more on that in another post, soon). I'm avoiding gluten and dairy, which were no-brainers for me. But also, surprisingly, tomato, potato and eggs. Lots of challenges with this combination when trying to cook delicious, un-boring food.

I think the most insulting to me though is the no dairy. I eat dairy in two forms: cream in my coffee, and cheese. Glorious, glorious cheese. I have the cream daily, and the cheese not daily, but frequently enough. Because, it's cheese. And cheese is delicious. Period.

But as it turns out, dairy is causing me some "distress". And we'll leave it at that. So out it goes for four weeks. The clock is ticking…

That being said, I absolutely loathe black coffee. And I need coffee in the morning to wake up. So now I'm in a peculiar situation. Almond milk is the natural alternative. But store bought almond milk is gross. I have tried so many brands. A lot of them have nasty ingredients in them, like carrageenan, lecithin, and other questionable things. Shouldn’t it just be almonds and water? I mean, why is it so hard? So without any suitable store-bought alternatives, I'm left to my own devices.

Let's go milk some nuts!

What you'll need

2 cups of raw almonds

2+ cups of filtered water

1/8 teaspoon vanilla (optional)

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon  (optional)

Other things you'll need

Nut milk bag: I have this one from Amazon

Air tight glass jar to store the milk in

Air tight container (I used a Pyrex) to soak the nuts in over night

Funnel

Blender

Colander

What you'll do

Measure 2 cups of raw almonds and 2 cups of filtered water. Place into air tight container and let sit overnight, or for at least 12 hours.

After their soak, pour the almond and water mixture into a colander and rinse the almonds well with fresh water. 

 

Add the almonds to your blender, and fill with fresh filtered water, so that the water is about 1/2 to 1 inch over the almonds. I personally like my almond milk to be thicker. The less water you add at this stage, the thicker your final product will be. Blend until the mixture is a pulpy white.

Here's the fun/annoying part. Now you're going to milk nuts! Yes, that sounds crazy. But that's what's about to happen. After you do this a few times, you will probably figure out your own system, but I'll walk you through my process. I take a glass measuring cup and put the nut milk bag inside of it. I then put about a cup of the mixture from the blender into the bag. Then squeeze out the milk from the bag into the glass measuring cup, starting from the top of the bag, working your way down to the bottom. Once you're satisfied that you've gotten as much liquid as possible out of the bag, pour the milk into your storage container. And BONUS! Instead of throwing the remaining almond pulp out, dump it on a baking sheet.  We'll come back to what you can do with that in a few. 

Repeat this process until you have milked all of your almonds.

At this point, you will have a delicious bottle of fresh, creamy almond milk. And you can high-five yourself because honestly, it is a bit of work, and I usually make a complete mess.

If you want to really kick it up and notch, now is when you can add the cinnamon and vanilla to elevate your milk to "nectar of the gods" status. That might be overkill, but, you should give it a try and make that call for yourself.

NOW, let's get back to that almond pulp! You should have dumped all that leftover pulp onto a cookie sheet, if you followed directions.

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees.

Spread the pulp evenly onto the cookie sheet, breaking up any large clumps.

Cook until the pulp feels dry, and no longer moist. This can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour plus, just depends on your oven. Honestly last time I did it I lost track of time and have no idea how long it took. I just ended up checking in on it every once in a while until I thought it was done.

Once it's cooled, you can put it in your food processor to make it fine, or keep it as is. Up to you. But now you have fresh, homemade almond flour to use in your favorite recipes! So really, this recipes is a two-for-one-er. You're welcome.

Cheers!