Just Almonds -- Almond Flour and Sugar Cookie Recipe

Just Almonds sell almonds with no preservatives or artificial flavors, they're gluten-free, kosher certified, freshness guaranteed almonds. All of their almond products are 100% natural California almonds, or made from 100% natural California almonds if it's the Almond Meal or Almond Flour.

The bag of almonds shown above are also from Just Almonds, the Almond Flour is shown and discussed below. Their almonds are very delicious. Some people use almonds and blend them to make their own almond flour, so you can do that if you really wanted to do it for the experiment, but you can make it easier and just buy the almond flour from Just Almonds. I love almonds and eat a handful here and there frequently. They're one of my favorite snacks. I took some of the almonds from the bag and put them in the oven (on 350) for a few minutes since they taste delicious that way too. 


What is Almond Meal? 
Almond Meal is ground up almonds (Just Almonds grounds to the finest grain possible). What you see here in my photos is the Almond Flour. 

Photo of the almond flour, straight from the package.

  

What is it used for?
Baking of course. But also for other cooking and even for nut butter! You can use Almond Meal (or the Almond Flour, which I'll explain the differences very shortly) in place of regular corn meal to bake with. Almonds have great nutritious value, so when you are consuming them (in ground up, powdery form or as whole pieces) you're getting the health benefits & nutrition that almonds offer. Some people use it for increased flavor, nutrition benefits, taste and even so they know they're using a safe, non-chemically-infused product to bake with and such (since many of the corn meals and stuff available contain chemicals and other harmful preservatives.)


What's the difference between Almond Meal and Almond Flour?

 Just Almonds has both Almond Meal and Almond Flour. The difference is that Almond Meal is ground with the skin and Almond Flour is ground without the skin, which means it'll be white in color. Personally, the skin does not affect how I look at the quality of a product.  I ain't bothered by a little color in my foods, so it's not important to me, but it may be to you. 

Despite those uses for Almond Flour and Almond Meal, there are people (ahem me!) who take an interest in using the product for health reasons! Here I go. You know when I get on a health talkin' kick I don't shut up, so bear with me while  I try and briefly get to the point. I'll list some of the health reasons for using Almond Meal and/or Almond Flour (this part excites me):

- Many people use Almond Meal/Almond Flour for their wheat allergies, Celiac disease, Crohn's disease, IBS (that's me!), and other gluten-free diets. 

See! I told you I'd be brief.

Not so fast though.


Besides being great for those like me with conditions that tend to flare up with certain foods (which I definitely have gained some serious healing in this area since I started making such huge changes), almonds also contain essential fatty acids, which are more important than you might think! I just recently learned how important myself.

Almond Flour has a consistency similar to corn meal rather than wheat flour. 
Almond Flour is great for people who are watching their glycemic index as well as other health-conscious, almond-lovin' folks! 

-Low in carbs and sugars.
-High in protein.

Uses of almond flour and almond meal

Almond flour is good in "quick-bread" type recipes, like muffins, nut breads, and pancakes.  It's not good for foods such as bread that require a real dough (you can't knead it). Usually, more eggs are required when baking with almond meal to provide more structure.

P.S. Just Almonds does recommend keeping the Almond Flour/Meal refrigerated. 

And now I'm going to show you what I made with the almond flour! I'll also list the recipe and give exact instructions of how I went about this. 

Sugar Cookies from Almond Flour! (Otherwise known as some of the best tasting sugar cookies ever!)

Since I'm a very new cook and know very little, and because I had very little ingredients, I figured a simple sugar cookie would be my best bet to start off with rather than trying to make something more complicated. I did have to improvise mostly because after getting all my ingredients ready, I spent 30 minutes tearing the kitchen apart looking for the non-existant mixer. Lovely. It seems someone has stolen our mixer! So thankfully, I had my lovie on hand who was happy to put his mixing skills to use. He's good with his hands and is used to mixing paint almost daily, so he can almost double as a mixer. Moving on...

Ingredients I used:
1 teaspoon baking soda.
1 teaspoon flour. (I'd figured the almond flour would be a replacement for flour, but upon looking through different recipes for sugar cookies, it seemed I either needed to add a bit of flour to help it rise or find baking powder. That was where I got confused. I didn't know there was a difference between baking soda and baking powder and all the recipes I found called for both! So I was told I could add a teaspoon of all purpose flour to compensate.)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
Half a cup of butter (softened.)
1 cup white sugar.
1 egg.
1 teaspoon of salt.

*You'll also need a mixer. Like I said, I went looking for mine only to realize it was gone (ahem, stolen), so Brozon done the mixing by hand. This will cause the cookies to be kind of crunchy -- sort of like when you drink coffee or something with sugar and it isn't fully dissolved so you have the crunchy sugar granules. This wasn't a problem for us as we don't mind some crunchy. Plus, the cookies still turned out delicious.

*Of course nuts or other things are optional. We stuck with simple sugar cookies, no extras. While mixing everything up though, I realized you could even add a tablespoon or so of peanut butter for peanut butter cookies! 



Instructions I went by:

1. Stir flour, baking soda and baking powder in one bowl. Set aside. Remember, I didn't have baking powder, only baking soda, so I used a teaspoon of flour (all-purpose) to compensate.

2. "Cream" together butter and sugar until smooth. "Cream" apparently means use a mixer. Again, mine was missing, so Brozon did it by hand.

3.   Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Gradually blend the ingredients.

4. Roll tablespoons of dough into balls, place on cookie sheet and into the oven. 

5. Bake on 350 for 8-10 minutes.

Ingredients mixed

Here's where ended up needing to improvise, once again. You can't use your hands like you normally would to roll balls of dough, so you dip them out by the spoon. I did that and put it in a pan, then in the oven. After a few minutes, I checked them and they'd turned into one big cake! No big deal since we weren't going for looks or anything.

After a couple more minutes though, it was turning into a very thin layer of my ingredients in the pan. I didn't like that, and worried since the top of the "cake" was turning brown quickly and the inner part was still very runny/liquidy,  so about 6 minutes into baking, I turned down the heat to 315 and began scraping the dough all to one side. That worked out much nicer for me because after 8 minutes, they were turning out better -- not liquidy on the middle and brown on top. I was worried the top would burn too.

After 9 minutes of baking, I started dipping out the mixture onto tin foil and rolling into balls -- well, close to balls. They're a little mishaped, but again, looks aren't a big deal since it's my first time.

Then we actually had cookies instead of a cake! The top layer that had been browning was a bit crunchy and the middle was left slightly chewy, which is my favorite. However, you can always stick em' back in the oven for a minute if you didn't want them to be chewy at all.

Here are the photos of how they turned out:

You can tell I really haven't worried about cooking pretty, by the looks of both the cookies and the pan! But who cares about beauty when something tastes so delicious? I'm sure you more experienced bakers could do much nicer work, but this is how it came out for me, and I wanted to share that. I know, I got picture-happy, but I couldn't resist!



 I definitely recommend trying sugar cookies made with almond flour! They're some of the most delicious cookies I've ever tasted. The almond flour sort of gives them a nutty taste, which is unique compared to your typical sugar cookie.

As you might have guessed, Just Almonds does sell other almond products like... Almonds! Aha! Did you guess that? I happen to have some of Just Almonds' almonds too (that's tough to say out loud!) 

If you look at my earlier, top photo of the Almond Flour, you'll see the package it comes in -- a sealed (re-sealable) bag. The almonds themselves come in the same type of bag and each have a nutrition label on the back, as well as package date and expiry date (both my flour and almonds say packaged Feb. 2013 and Expires: Feb. 2013.)

A note from Just Almonds' website:

"All of our products are shipped from the current crop and ship directly from the farm without repackaging the product or mixing it with other types of nuts (peanuts for example)."

And ...
"Our ranch is located in the heart of the Central Valley of California, and our almonds ship straight from our ranch. We take great pride in offering the highest quality California almonds and the friendliest customer service."

Recipes! 
You can find tons of wonderful recipes for using Almond Flour/Meal on Just Almonds website. P.S. I definitely recommend looking at the Almond Butter recipe! If you want to look at their recipes, here's the link. The Almond Butter is super easy to make, requires very little to nothing extra (besides almonds of course! And blender or food processor.) My partner and I have been really interested in making and trying the Almond Butter, so we had to try that one first. That is what I did since I'm not creative where baking is concerned & I decided to make...