All About Almonds
Source of Recipe
Ed Murrieta
Call me nuts, but the best stone fruit I've eaten all season has been an almond. Peaches? Hard or mushy. Plums? Unpredictable. Cherries? Too expensive to be enjoyed. Almonds are always consistently sweet and buttery.
Yes, almonds are a stone fruit, a cousin of the peach. Botanists have even given them a fruity Latin name to make it official: Prunus dulcis.
Almonds are among the most versatile ingredients in the baker's pantry. From flour to paste to nutty toppings, almonds give baked goods structure, sweetness and crunch. Here in California, where more than half of the world's supply is grown, baking without almonds seems as unholy as baking without sugar.
Without almonds, there would be no macaroons. Without almonds, there would be no marzipan. Without almonds, there would be no dacquoise. Without almonds well, this baker might go nutty.
Some of my favorite cookie and cake recipes call for almond flour, almond paste or an almond-sugar powder mixture. While grinding the nuts may seem troublesome to some folks, it's a fairly simple procedure that offers a delicious payoff. If you don't have a food processor, a blender works just fine. Just make sure your almonds are completely dry before grinding or your mixture will be pasty (OK if you're making almond paste).
Blanching almonds: You can buy bags of blanched almonds. If you want to blanch them yourself, place the almonds in a pot and pour boiling water over them. Let them soak for 5 minutes. Drain the water. Pinch the almonds to remove the skin. To dry the almonds, place them in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake in a 350-degree oven for 15 minutes.
Almond-sugar powder: Use equal parts nuts and powdered sugar. Grind all the nuts and half the powdered sugar in a food processor or blender, stopping to break up any caking as necessary. Sift through a medium sieve. Regrind any nuts that do not pass through with the remaining powdered sugar. Resift the entire batch and thoroughly combine the mixture.
Almond paste: Why spend 10 bucks for a tiny tube at the supermarket when you can make your own for a fraction of the cost? All you need is an equal amount of blanched dry almonds and sugar, preferably powdered sugar, plus something sticky like honey, corn syrup, apricot jam or even simple syrup. Combine ground nuts and sugar. Add something sticky. (The amount will vary; freshly blanched almonds require less.) Stir with a wooden spoon to combine. Knead by hand until smooth.
Almond flour: Finely grind blanched almonds. Sift the meal and regrind any nuts that don't pass through the sieve. Repeat process.
Almond meal can be combined and sifted with flour in almost any recipe. Just be sure to decrease the amount of flour by 1 ounce for every 3 ounces of almond meal. And remember: The quantity of ground nuts cannot be greater than the amount of sugar in a recipe.
Almonds start out fleshy and end up as a dry kernel. When they begin to bloom, almonds look like small peaches. But as they ripen, the fruit flesh fails to swell and finally cracks open to reveal the nutty seed.
Celebrated from King Tut's time to the pages of the Bible to the paintings of Van Gogh, almonds originated in central Asia millions of years ago. Botanists believe almonds evolved from the same primitive stock as peaches. Egyptians, Greeks and Romans spread almonds along the Mediterranean and southern Europe. In the 1700s, Spanish missionaries brought almonds to California, where the trees continue to thrive in the hot, dry climate of the Central Valley and coastal plains. Unlike its short-lived cousin the peach tree, almond trees bear fruit for more than 50 years.
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