Making Blanched Almond Flour

Blanched almond flour is my flour of choice for making chocolate chip cookies, spice cakes, banana muffins, breading chicken etc.

Several months ago I bought 5 pounds of it from American Almond Products in New York, but I've also bought the blanched sliced almonds from Trader Joe's and the 3 pound bags of whole almonds from Costco with the intention of making my own blanched almond flour.

Somewhere I read that the only blender good enough to make ones own almond flour was the Vita Mix, so I bought the top of the line set. However, after buying it, I couldn't find the reference for making blanched almond flour with it, so I went online and hunted for directions. The only good directions said to use a clean coffee grinder and to only put in enough blanched almonds to just cover the blades.

Yesterday morning I checked the Vita Mix booklets and found where it gave directions on how to grind ones own coffee in the "Dry Container". Ah ha! I'll follow those directions for the blanched sliced almonds in the freezer. (Somewhere I read that it's better to grind frozen almonds because the oil doesn't get in the way.) Several articles warned about not over processing the almonds because they can quickly turn into almond butter.

I just barely covered the blades with blanched sliced almonds from one package of Trader Joe's sliced blanched almonds. I turned on the Vita Mix and turned the speed up to a 10 for less than a minute and had perfect almond flour!!!! It took three times to "do" the little package of sliced blanched almonds from Trader Joe's, but the result was perfect, and it didn't take much time. I ended up using all three bags of those almonds that I'd had in the freezer.

After doing that, I decided to attack one of the 3 pound bags of almonds from Costco. Blanching almonds is something I've never done myself. Once or twice I helped my mother when I was a child, and I remember how the blanched almonds will pop/fly out of their skins once they've been emerged in boiling water and how the water smells sort of like black tea.

I'd found two sets of directions on how to blanch almonds. The first one I tried was to pour boiling water over the almonds and let them sit for a minute, drain them, let them cool, and then start popping them out of their skins. I think that method works, but I had poured all 3 pounds of almonds into a bowl at once, and that was too many to do. So I tried the second method: boil water in a medium sized pot, add almonds, bring back to a boil for a minute, remove almonds, rinse and cool almonds, and then pop the skins off; then dry them on a large towel.

It took a long time to process the three pounds of almonds. I don't think I'll ever do that many at once again. I did use the same water for each batch, and I removed the almonds from the water with my Chinese strainer with the bamboo handle. It just took a long time.

Once the blanched almonds were cool and dry, I placed them in a ziploc bag and into the freezer.

Today I'm going to do a lot of baking. I don't think I'll need to use the blanched almonds I did yesterday, but if I do, they're in the freezer ready to go!