There are two main varieties of almonds – bitter and sweet. Bitter kernels are used as an addition to poultry and fish dishes: they add an incomparable light nutty aroma. In Asian cuisine you can find many recipes for preparing hot dishes and salads with almonds.
Bitter almonds are pre-processed and used to produce drinks and flavor desserts. Many people love the exquisite Amaretto liqueur, which is consumed in its pure form, and also soaked into cakes, poured over ice cream or added to cocktails.
All over the world, sweet almonds are used to flavor baked goods and sweet culinary products (pies, cookies, muffins).
How to replace almonds in baking?
If you decide to make cookies, but there are no almonds in the house, you can replace them with regular rolled oats. To do this, pour half a glass of flakes into a frying pan and fry until golden brown. This will give the cereal a nutty flavor. If you put a little butter in the pan, the oatmeal takes on the aroma of marzipan. Feel free to put it in the dough: in the finished dish, the flakes are difficult to distinguish from almonds.
How to make marzipan without almonds?
Marzipan is a sweet dessert made from ground almond kernels and powdered sugar. The nut mass is used to decorate cakes, make sweets and figurines for festive table decorations. The marzipan mixture sticks together without third-party additives due to the high content of almond oil. If you add other nuts (peanuts or walnuts) instead of almonds, the mixture will not be elastic enough, and the finished dessert may quickly crumble.
It is quite difficult to replace almonds in marzipan, but craftsmen have invented an inexpensive way to prepare artificial marzipan:
- A tablespoon of starch (corn or rice);
- 50 ml water;
- Fine powdered sugar.
The starch is poured with water, stirred thoroughly and brewed with half a glass of boiling water, essence, a little lemon juice and powdered sugar are added. The prepared mass is stirred until it becomes plastic, like plasticine.
Artificial walnut marzipans
You will need to take:
- 100 g peeled walnuts;
- 100 g powdered sugar;
- A tablespoon of Amaretto.
Dry the nuts in the oven, grind thoroughly using a meat grinder or blender, and mix with powdered sugar. After this, grind again in a meat grinder and add Amaretto. The mixture is quickly kneaded. In a cool place, artificial marzipan remains fresh for a long time.
Artificial semolina marzipans
- ½ cup semolina;
- ½ cup powdered sugar;
- 2 tbsp. spoons of cognac;
- A few drops of almond essence;
- 1.5-2 tablespoons of softened butter;
- A tablespoon of ground apricot kernels.
Knead the mixture well until it has an elastic consistency. If the dough crumbles, add a little water. Unfortunately, such marzipans dry out quite quickly.
How to replace almonds in salads?
The recipe for many salads includes almonds; they go well with herbs, chicken, turkey, tuna, and fruits. Pine nuts are an excellent substitute for almonds: the slight smell of pine needles and haze combines with the listed ingredients. Since pine nuts are a rather expensive product, you can use peanuts, cashews or walnuts in salads.
Let's sum it up
- To make cookies and muffins, you can use toasted oatmeal with butter instead of almonds;
- You can prepare marzipan mass from walnuts, corn starch, powdered sugar and almond essence;
- Instead of almonds, you can put pine or walnuts, cashews, and peanuts in the salad.
Almond flour is a product that is used to make many types of baked goods. If you want to pamper yourself and your loved ones, you cannot do without this ingredient.
Thanks to it, baked goods are airy and tender, they acquire a special aroma and taste. But what if the store doesn’t sell it? Do you really have to forget about delicious desserts? Well, why not, because you can do it yourself and save a lot of money!
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How to make almond flour at home: recipe
To prepare it, you need to take chopped almonds, you can buy them in the supermarket or chop them yourself with a knife. Thanks to this, the flour will be light and without lumps.
If you are using whole nuts, rinse them and let them dry on a paper towel until they are completely dry.
Now throw the almonds into the bowl of a food processor and start grinding, after 2-3 minutes complete the process. You can also use a blender.
Where to buy almond flour
You are unlikely to find this product in stores, since it is not in great demand and has a fairly high price. It is much easier to buy almonds and make powder from them yourself using a food processor or blender.
1 cup of almonds makes a cup of flour
Make the flour in small portions so that the almonds are crushed evenly and there are no lumps
You can use either shelled or unshelled nuts.
Almond flour cookies with honey
Ingredients:
2 cups almond flour
¼ cup honey
½ tsp. almond extract
¼ tsp. salt
For the glaze:
2 tbsp. softened butter
2 tbsp. honey
½ tsp. almond extract
A pinch of salt
Preparation:
Mix all ingredients for the dough and knead into a homogeneous mixture. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, roll out the dough as thin as possible and cut it into shapes using cookie cutters.
Bake the cookies for 10 minutes at 180 degrees, they should become golden.
Prepare the glaze from the ingredients listed and brush it over the cooled cookies.
What can you replace almond flour with?
Of course, it is not advisable to replace it, but if you cannot buy almonds, make it from peanuts, they also have a creamy and fatty consistency.
Macarons without almond flour
If we talk about original macarons, they are made exclusively from almond flour. Yes, of course you can replace it with peanut and almond flour, but the result will be a completely different cake. If you want to experience the real taste of this dessert, use only almond flour.
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As you can see, almond flour is a product that you can make yourself and not overpay a lot of money for it. Thanks to it, you can prepare delicious baked goods that will captivate you and your friends.
Today I will tell you and show you how to make almond flour at home. Essentially, this valuable and expensive product provides powdered sweet almond nuts. The use of almond flour in cooking is not limited to the preparation of the famous macaroons - it makes amazing biscuits, marzipan, desserts, as well as delicious fillings for various homemade baked goods.
It must be said that the cost of finely ground almond flour for many (and for me personally) is prohibitively high, and it is difficult to buy. This product is much more expensive than the nuts themselves, even in peeled form! But if you want, you can easily make your own almond flour. In this case, it is not even necessary to peel the nuts - then you will get brown almond flour. It can be used in making muffins, biscuits and chocolate macaroons.
But in this recipe I will show you how to peel almonds and get flour. I make it for baking muffins and biscuits, so I dry the nuts until slightly browned - then the flour has a richer almond aroma. If you want snow-white (with a subtle creamy tint) almond flour, the peeled nuts need to be dried at room temperature for quite a long time - about a week.
Ingredients:
Cooking the dish step by step with photos:
To make almond flour at home, in addition to the nuts themselves (use the quantity as needed), we need a little plain water. Naturally, we use raw sweet almonds. In addition, we cannot do without a coffee grinder, in which we will grind the dried nuts into flour.
Pour the nuts into a suitable container and pour boiling water over them so that the liquid completely covers the almonds. Leave for 10-15 minutes so that the water cools down a little.
Then drain the water. Thanks to the warm “bath,” the nut skin swelled and moved away from the kernels.
Now you can peel the almonds. This is done very simply and quite quickly - hold the nut between the fingers of one hand, pick out a piece of skin with the other and simply press on the nut. Just be careful: almond kernels are slippery, they literally jump out of the skin and can fly far.
Next, the peeled almonds need to be dried. As I said above, drying methods can be different. If you need white flour, dry the almonds at room temperature for about a week - the time depends on the humidity in the room. To do this, you need to lay out the nuts on a tray, which is previously covered with paper towels or napkins. Cover the top with napkins in one layer and remove. The next day, transfer the nuts to new napkins and so on. You can also quickly dry the almonds in a frying pan, in the oven (that's what I do), or in the microwave if you're happy with the creaminess of the almond flour. Preheat the oven to 100-150 degrees and place the peeled nuts on a baking sheet. Turn the almonds over from time to time to prevent them from burning, then let them cool. It only takes a couple of minutes to dry the nuts in a hot frying pan or in the microwave, but they need to be stirred constantly so that the almonds don’t burn.
There are also subtleties and nuances here that should not be neglected. First of all, you need to grind the almonds in small portions and not for long. It is best in pulsating mode, which is with stops, shaking the coffee grinder. The fact is that when the nuts are heated (the coffee grinder knives get very hot during the grinding process), oil will begin to release, which can cause the flour to stick together in lumps. In addition, some chefs recommend grinding almonds together with powdered sugar (if a recipe with almond flour calls for the addition of this product) - then the likelihood of clumping is minimized.
Almond flour is not often found in our stores. How to make your own almond flour? It’s not at all difficult, and in my opinion, homemade flour is even superior in quality to store-bought flour.
If the flour is used to make French cakes, then it needs to be sifted through a fine sieve, you will have to tinker. In other cases (sponge cake, frangipane, fillings for pies and pastries), particularly fine grinding is not required and the process is not so labor-intensive.
Pour boiling water over almonds and leave for 10 minutes.
Place on a sieve and rinse with cold water.
After this manipulation, the skin of the nuts is very easily removed. If the almonds were very dry, then you need to repeat the procedure with boiling water again.
It is very important to dry the nuts well; this can be done naturally or in the oven. If time allows, then it is better to act on the first option. Place the peeled nuts on a towel to remove excess moisture, then pour them onto a tray (plate, baking sheet) and put them away from the eyes of household members. As practice shows, peeled almonds attract them much more than unpeeled ones. 🙂 The drying process takes several days; according to my observations, it takes at least two days.
Second option. Turn on the oven at 90-100 degrees, pour the almonds onto a baking sheet and dry for about an hour. Be sure to ensure that the nuts do not darken. If the oven is electric, then this is easier; with a gas oven you need to be vigilant. Then the almonds need to be completely cooled, you can put them in the freezer for 20-30 minutes.
Grind dry nuts in a blender or coffee grinder in small portions, I prefer a blender. Grind for no more than 20-30 seconds, shaking the coffee grinder or blender periodically. Since the knives become hot during operation and the nuts may release oil, grinding for a long time may result in a paste instead of flour. For the same reason, if you are going to make almond flour for future use and more, take breaks from working - you can eat some nuts and cool the blender slightly.
The finished flour should be sifted through a sieve; if large particles remain, grind them again or set aside and use for biscuits. For example, which is used in coconut cake.
In recipes that do not require very fine grinding, you can grind the almonds directly with sugar or powdered sugar, just take the amount of sugar and almonds needed for the recipe. If the whiteness of the flour is not important, then you don’t have to peel the nuts; in a chocolate sponge cake, for example, you won’t see a difference. Almond flour can be stored in a container with a tight-fitting lid in a dry place. I won’t say the maximum shelf life, but a month or two for sure.
Now the absence of this ingredient will not stop you from culinary experiments, and to find out where you can use the prepared almond flour, fill out the subscription form and then you will definitely not miss new recipes.
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Today I will tell you how to prepare almond flour at home. The process is simple and not particularly long. And if everything is done correctly, the quality of the product will be many times better than that of store-bought flour. You will also save money: compare how much almonds cost and how much good almond flour costs.
Recipes with almond flour are popular in many European countries. In our latitudes they are still considered exotic for most people. Fans especially love them: you can make delicious pastries and desserts from almond flour, and the amount of carbohydrates in the dishes will be minimal, but there will be a lot of easily digestible protein and healthy fats. And the taste, and the aroma...
As you can see in the photo, almond flour is coarser than wheat or other common baking flour. Its chemical composition also differs from cereal flour, and therefore its properties.
You can’t bake bread from it, you can’t fry pancakes, but there are much more interesting options. For example, the base for the famous macaroons (aka macaroons or macaroons) is made from almond flour. Just remember this incredible texture!
You can add flour to biscuit dough, to meringue and puddings, to traditional madeleines and pancakes. I love cooking it - it turns out slightly crispy and very flavorful.
Ingredients
● almonds (not fried) – 300 gr.
Preparation
- First you need to peel the nuts. To do this, throw the almonds into boiling water for literally 1 minute.
- peel the almonds. This is done simply: apply light pressure and the nut itself “jumps” out of the peel.
— place the prepared nuts on a baking sheet in one layer and place them in the oven (80°C) to dry for 30 minutes. In order for the almonds to dry evenly, they need to be stirred occasionally, then removed from the oven and allowed to cool.
- pour the nuts into the blender bowl and grind, stopping every 7 seconds
- as soon as the mass turns into a substance similar to flour, stop and sift it
Unchopped pieces of nuts can be re-sent to the blender or left to decorate various dishes
Don't try to make the flour finer. The almonds may begin to release oil and become wet and sticky. And then it won’t be flour, but paste.
Now you know how to make almond flour at home, and you can cook amazing goodies from it.
It should be noted that the nuts can be crushed together with the peel - but then the color of the flour will be darker. I prefer a sheer, soft creamy powder. Products made from it hold their shape better than those made with whole flour, and they also look more beautiful.
If you don't get almond flour right the first time, don't worry. The process requires some skill, but it is gained quickly. And even if you overcooked the nuts in the blender, no disaster happened - almond paste is also very tasty.
In all my recipes where it is present, it can easily be replaced with almond, so do not rush to throw away the “spoiled” product.