Some of the recipes I have posted here already require almond milk, such as my gluten-free bread recipe, and my dairy-free sorbet. You can easily buy almond milk in a major supermarket, but it is hard to find an almond milk that has a minimal amount of additives. Particularly, people who want to go on an entirely, or mostly, salt-free diet are limited in almond milk options. In addition, if you are on a clean-eating diet it is important to avoid processed foods as much as possible, and really anything that has to have a certain shelf life will be processed to a certain degree and have additives. Almond milk is, although really not a ‘bad’ processed food, still affected by this to a certain degree. Today I realized it shouldn’t be too complicated to make your own almond milk at home. Here is the recipe I used, and the end result was fantastic!

Ingredients

• 1 cup of raw almonds
• 4 cups of water
• Agave nectar (optional)
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract (optional)

Preparation

• Cover almonds in water and soak overnight.
• Put the soaked almonds in a blender, and add 4 cups of water.
• Blend on a high setting.
• Add 1 tbsp of vanilla extract, and/or some agave nectar to sweeten it to taste.
• Blend a few minutes on highest setting until completely smooth.
• Strain the mixture through a fine sieve or cheesecloth.
• Squeeze as much milk as you can from the almonds. To do this, using a cheese cloth is probably better than a sieve, but whatever you have available or prefer working with will work fine to extract the almond milk from the mixture.
• Pour the fresh almond milk in a glass container and refrigerate. The almond milk can be kept in the fridge for up to 5-6 days.

Tip: the left over almond pulp can be used to make cookies, cake, bread, or added to sauces!

If you have an egg allergy baking can be a bit of a pain. Many great recipes call for eggs, and in some cases regular powdered egg replacers you can find in the grocery store just doesn’t cut it. An easy way to get similar effects, without using any eggs, is by making flax gel.

This recipe replaces two eggs in any of your baking needs:

Ingredients:

• Flax meal
• Water

Preparation:

Use two tablespoons of ground flaxseed meal. Add 1/2 cup of water to the flaxseed meal in a large microwaveable container.

Stir the contents together.

Microwave until the egg replacer mixture bubbles and gets slightly thick. This takes about 3 minutes.

Place the mixture in your freezer to cool it, and wait until it thickens even more.

Use an electric hand mixer to blend the egg replacer mixture, until it gets a slight cream color and froths.

Now add it to your baking recipes whenever eggs are called for!