Make your own Homemade Almond Flour for Baking Macarons

Almond flour is just ground almonds!

To be more specific, almond flour is blanched, skinned, and ground almonds. It is pale in color and mild in flavor, with none of the bitterness that can come with the skins of the almonds. (That's also what differentiates almond flour from almond meal, which is ground raw almonds with their skins on.)

Making almond flour is a straightforward process, so it’s easy to make it yourself at home!

What you need to know about almond flour:

• It’s Gluten-free!

• Store the almond flour in the fridge, or even the freezer, and use within a few weeks

• Almond flour gives baked goods, especially macarons, a distinctively chewy texture!

Homemade Almond Flour for Macarons

INGREDIENTS

Blanched, skinned almonds (often sold as slivered almonds) or blanch and skin whole raw almonds yourself. Every 1 ounce of whole almonds will yield about 1/4 cup almond flour. If you're starting with blanched and skinned almonds, skip ahead to step 5.

You can use however many almonds you have to make a small or large batch! You will need about 120 grams of almond flour to make 24 macarons if you plan on measuring the flour for macaron baking later.

INSTRUCTIONS

1: To blanch and skin raw almonds, bring a large pot of water to a boil. When the water is boiling, add the almonds.

2: Boil for about 1 minute.

3: Drain and rinse with cold water until cool enough to handle. The skins will slip right off, so simply pull them off and discard.

4: Lay the almonds on a clean kitchen towel or several layers of paper towels and let sit to dry thoroughly (at least several hours and up to overnight).

5: Put the blanched, skinned, dry almonds in a food processor. Pulse until they're ground into a sand-like texture.

Now the almond flour is ready to be measured and used for your macaron recipe!