Project number 2&3: Almond milk and Almond butter!

So since I forgot to post yesterday, I decided to talk about the two projects today. First is Almond milk!

Dairy-free, delicious, and easy to make. Who could go wrong? My husband uses it for his protein shakes, and I love making my smoothies with it. Along with having a small glass with my meal. My daughter seems to like the vanilla kind more than plain.

So step one: Soak the almonds. 1 cup of almonds, and enough water to cover it and a bit more on top. Should look a bit like this:

Change the water every 8 hours. And soak for 12. I soaked mine for 24 because I'm a rebel (and it's okay to soak for that long too!)

Time to break out that food processor. Depending on how big yours is, you can add all the almonds and 5 cups of water. However, mine is kinda small, so I had to do 4 separate batches. Which mine consisted of one cup almonds, and one cup-one and a half cups water. I learned the hard way to never add more water than your processor can handle when all 4 cups of water soaked my kitchen counters /:

 After you process it for a minute or two, get a medium sized bowl, and your nut milk bag. And then just strain the milk through the bag.

Bad housewife with messy counters. Now just squeeeeeeeeeze until the very last drop.

Save the pulp! I put mine in a different bowl.

 Now, just keep doing that until you're done! (:

Container of milk. Makes about one quart depending on how much water you use. Also: the Mason jars weren't here yet so I had to improvise.

 All the extra pulp. Stored that in an airtight container and put it in the freezer.
Viola! Almond milk, and pulp to make almond flour!

Onto Almond butter! All you need is almonds, food processor, and about 20 minutes. No pain, no gain. Start with about 3 cups of almonds and put it on a cookie sheet. Bake for about 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees.

When they're out of the oven and cooled a bit, put them in your food processor.

And just whirl those suckers around! These almonds have no chance. They WILL turn into almond butter!

After a little bit, it'll look like this:

But don't stop.

You'll have to scrape the sides multiple times.

Have faith, friends. It won't happen as quickly as you want. It'll take lots of time, and lots of scraping the sides to make sure it's mixed enough.

And before you know it, you'll have creamy almond butter!

I got big Mason jars for the milk, so I just put the almond butter in them. These are about 32 oz jars. You could probably put the almond butter in a 16 oz jar.

 Yay! So much yumminess! The milk will last about a week in the fridge. Although, mine barely lasted 4 days before it was all gone (: And the almond butter should last about 2 weeks.

Thinking I might make some jam next! Hope you like the post today, and I hope to see you soon.