How to Make Almond Flour

Things sure have been crazy lately. Coronavirus has pretty much taken over the world and we are on day 14 of self quarantine. Tara has vacated her place and is hunkering down with my family. Not sure if she would go more crazy at her place by herself or being around my two crazy kids 24/7. So far we have all stayed pretty sane and keep telling ourselves to take advantage of this time together. Enough with this Corona talk, let’s get on to the topic of today.

Since we are pretty much stuck in the house, we decided to use this time to experiment with some baking. We have always wanted to try and make French Macarons and it was about time we stopped talking about it and actually did it! One problem, we didn’t have any almond flour which is a main ingredient in macarons. Easy enough just run down to the store quick, right? Not when you’re trying to avoid the plague. Solution….why don’t we make our own! It’s actually pretty easy and we happen to have a bag of almonds on hand.

What You Need:

Whole Almonds (Blanched)
Food Processor

Step 1: Blanch the Almonds

If your almonds are not already blanched the first thing you will need to do is blanch them to remove the skin. Bring a small pot of water to a boil. Once the water is boiling, add the almonds and boil for 30-60 seconds (one cup whole almonds will make approximately one cup almond flour). Immediately pour the almonds into a colander and rinse with cold water then pat dry with a paper towel.

Now this is the fun part! Pinch an almond between your fingers and the skin will come right off. Be careful because they will be pretty slippery and can easily shoot across the room. Once you have removed the skin from all the almonds, pat dry again and then spread them out on a cookie sheet in a single layer. Allow at least a few hours for the almonds to dry. We like to blanch the almonds the night before so they can dry overnight. It is very important that the almonds are dry or else when you grind them up you will make more of a paste rather than flour.

Step 2: Make the Flour

Add your dry blanched almonds to a food processor and pulse until you get a flour like consistency. Tada! You now have homemade almond flour!

We used our homemade almond flour to make the French Macarons and they turned out great! Along with the macarons we also made our White Chocolate and Toffee Chip Cookies which are AMAZING! We plan to share this recipe soon. After a fun day of baking we packaged the cookies and macarons and delivered them to some friends and family that live close by in hopes to cheer them up during these rough times. We are pleased to announce that they were a huge hit!