Cashew Almond Milk!

11:28:00 PM

My family and I drink a lot of milk and dairy in general, but gradually my parents have been noticing that milk may actually be causing some negative symptoms and making some of their health conditions worse.

I have eczema, mild asthma, and I'm lactose sensitive. I drank a lot of Almond Breeze almond milk at school because I don't like soy. And I realize now how much money I spent on just cartons and cartons of almond milk.

I played around with the idea of making my own a couple times but it always seemed like so much work and I didn't have the resources or time to blanch and peel a bunch of almonds every time I wanted milk. BUT, it turns out you don't need to do all that and it's actually so easy and super cost effective!

First soak 1 "cup" of your nuts for at least 8 hours. I chose to add cashews to my mix because they have a higher sugar content and a richer taste which I was hoping would be a nice transition from dairy milk for my parents. If you're making your milk with specific health benefits in mind, I recommend this article that includes a chart listing the calorie, fat, protein, fiber, and sugar contents of pretty much every nut there is.

I say "cups" because this recipe is formulaic, All you need is 4 parts of water to every one part of nuts. So if you did use 1 cup of nuts, you would use 4 cups of water to make roughly 4 cups of almond milk!

Nuts have different soaking times but 6-12 hours is a good range of time. I just soaked mine overnight. If you decide to use pistachios or brazil nuts you don't have to soak them. You might actually find that the nuts expand, you can see that they've popped up over the top of the rim quite a bit.

Just combine and blend until you notice that the particles that collect along the side of the blender are very fine. You may want to add some sort of flavoring and I recommend liquid sweeteners so that the flavor incorporates equally into the milk. You could also try flavors like vanilla, cinnamon, or cocoa. Like store-bought almond milk, the milk will naturally separate over time, so it's a good idea to shake it before you serve it!

I wanted to try to get a thicker texture so I just tried a sieve but it was still a bit too grainy and I didn't have a finer sieve so I ended up using a muslin cloth. I happened to have a muslin cloth because my mom used to make homemade soy milk (as noted earlier, I don't like soy milk). But if you don't have one, you can buy a piece for a dollar or two at a cloth store, or you could technically use clean cotton cloth like that of a pillow case although I don't recommend it as much because i think its more likely to collect dust and leave behind fiber particles.

If you keep the remaining pulp you can actually dry it and make almond flour! But that's another blog post. Almond milk doesn't need to be refrigerated like dairy milk does, although I prefer to since this is a raw milk with no preservatives.

And there you have it! I was happily surprised by the taste, it's undoubtedly lighter than dairy milk but richer than I expected. I assume you can adjust the amount of water to your taste. The milk will only be at its best for 3-4 days so only make an amount that you can consume in that amount of time! It might be a good idea to put a date on it (especially if you plan to make this regularly) just so you don't forget!