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!