Homemade Almond Milk (finally!)

Remember when I bought that bag of almonds?

Yeah, that’s the one.  Remember how I said I’d tell you what I did with them?  Yeah, you probably forget I said that by now, considering that was a week ago.  Oops, I apologize for the delay, but like I said yesterday: better late than never.

I should also mention that I have a slight obsession with Healthy Exposures as of late and after seeing Jess make her own almond milk, I was convinced I needed to do the same.

Turns out it’s really easy.  Gena of Choosing Raw has a nice tutorial, if you’re looking to follow in my footsteps (and you should).

I measured out a cup of almonds.

Then this sequence of events happened:

Hold up. 

“Should I have bought raw almonds instead of buying roasted because I live my life on autopilot?” 

Race to computer and goggle “Can you make almond milk with roasted almonds?”

Turns out you can.  Pretend you can read the text because I have no idea how to make screen shots bigger.

Phew.

Almond soaking continuted.

I soaked mine over night.

The next morning I woke up to some cloudy almond water.

Which I tossed into the blender, which may or may not still be sitting in my room.  Just the bottom part!!  The dirty part went to the kitchen.  I’m gross, but I’m not that gross.

I added some vanilla and a couple dates, for fun plus some natural sweetness.  Why does it feel like I run out of vanilla on a weekly basis?

Blend away, friends.

At this point, you strain your almond milk with a cheesecloth or the like and if you’re me you just use your produce bag (washed, of course).  I swear I get more use out of those things than my actual strainer.  Then you can let the milk drain on it’s own of if you’re impatient, and I am, you can squeeze the liquid out.

When I told my mom I made my own almond milk she said, “Did you have to milk an almond?”  And I said “yes!” because that whole squeezing out the liquid part definitely seemed like milking an almond to me.

Result: creamy almond milk.  The picture of which is reminding me of coffee right now and you’re right, Starbucks does sound good right about now.

This beats any store bought almond milk by a mile.  And you should see how creamy this makes oatmeal.  Really.

The bad news?  This won’t last long.  Mine started tasting a liiitle funky about two days later.  I used it in my oatmeal anyways (told you I’m gross) but I recommend you grab a cookie and drink it right away.

The good news?  No almonds were harmed in the making of this almond milk.  In fact, they weren’t even wasted because you can save that “pulp” — you now have almond meal for cookie baking or pancake making, or whatever else rhymes.

Have a good one 🙂