Make Your Own Almond Flour

Kylie and I have both been trying to eat more healthy foods lately, and a lot of the recipes I've found feature almond flour.  But they always seem to call for small amounts of the stuff, so I can never bring myself to buy a whole big expensive bag. When my friend Meghan sent me a recipe that called for a tiny bit of almond flour to make a crust, I decided it would be the perfect time to try making my own almond flour.

I went to a local farmer's market to acquire some raw almonds.  I bought a small container, since I wasn't sure how this whole thing was going to turn out, but you can certainly buy them in larger quantities.  Then I called Kylie over to help me out, because I am far too nervous about screwing things up to try new projects on my own.

First we boiled some water and dumped in all the almonds.

We let them boil for about a minute and then promptly poured them into a strainer and ran cold water over them until they cooled.

Next we peeled all the skins off the almonds.  This might sound like an annoying task, but I thought it was a lot of fun.  If you squeeze them at the bottom, the almond will usually pop right out of the skin.  I'm not gonna lie, there were a lot of rogue almonds flying around my kitchen!

I decided I wanted my almond flour to have a more smokey flavor, so next we roasted the almonds in the oven at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes. 

When they were roasted to perfection, we threw them in the NuWave Twister and blended them up.  This is the tricky part, because if you blend too long you'll end up skipping almond flour and diving right into almond butter!

And that's it!  This was a really super simple project and, if you don't mind skins or want raw almond flour, it can be even simpler - you can just buy some almonds and toss them in a blender.  I'm not sure how equals out in price if you use a lot of almond flour at home, but for someone like me who only needs a little on occasion, this is definitely the way to go.  Plus, it always feels more satisfying to make something yourself than to just buy it at the store - at least for me anyway!