My son loves milk, too. All kinds of milk I mentioned above, but his most favorite one remains to be breast milk. Hee hee
Enter cashew milk:
Pictured above are three bottles. I was able to make three full bottles of cashew milk; unfortunately, Yuri drank one up before I got the chance to take a photo!
Just to make it clear, we'll still gladly drink any forms of milk available. But ever since I read a blog post about homemade cashew milk way back last year, I've been itching to make one for
One day, though, my folks were at Victoria Plaza to buy some baking materials when they stumbled upon packets upon packets of, you guessed it, raw cashews! Yay!
It's a good thing they remembered my project and bought me a small packet. Just a small packet first, around 100 grams, because I don't know how to make cashew milk yet. Well, that was before this week, because I found out doing it was soooo easy!
Without much ado, here's how to make your own cashew milk:
First, you will need the following:
- Cashew nuts
- Drinking water for soaking
- More drinking water for the actual milk-making
- Honey or agave or dates to taste (optional)
- Cinnamon or cocoa (optional)
Truly, all you basically need are cashew nuts and water!
Buy a pack of raw cashews. Take note that it should be raw. It shouldn't have been cooked or processed in any way.
Soak the nuts in water. You can just soak them in any covered bowl or glass, but I used Yuri's milk jars because they are more photogenic. That's an acceptable reason, right? Now, you can soak them in an hour or overnight as long as the nuts are soft enough. Me, I left them in the fridge more than overnight. I wanted them to be as soft as possible because my blender wasn't heavy-duty enough.
(Sorry for the next photos; they were taken at night.)
Drain the soaking water and run the cashew nuts under running water until the water runs clear.
Place the cashew nuts into your blender and cover them with water. I didn't measure the water, but I just estimated it to be twice as much as the cashews. For example, if you used a cup of cashews, you should have 2 cups of water. Or just begin with little water and gradually add more water until you reach your desired consistency.
STEP 5:
Blend the mixture! Add honey etc. to flavor the milk.
Transfer the milk to bottles (or any container), but first, strain them. You will need to strain the milk with a strainer with little holes or a cheesecloth to separate the actual milk from the nut particles. I only strained my milk once, but I discovered there were still little nut particles in them. It was fine by me, but my toddler son wouldn't drink milk with particles. To be sure, strain it twice.
(Tip: I kept the cashew nut particles and used them in a cookie recipe. No waste! Perfect!)
That's it! I'm glad to report that from a little 100-gram pack of cashew nuts, I was able to make three bottles of cashew milk. That's a great deal because the pack only cost less than P50. That's less than P50 for three full jars of milk! :-)
And the taste? I really find it refreshing. It's not as creamy as full-cream dairy milk, of course, but I kind of prefer it over soy milk. I find that it's also better to make cashew milk at home rather than almond milk because, first, almonds are much more expensive, and second, almond milk is more complicated to make. You need more materials to make the latter.
Cashew milk is perfect for the lactose-intolerant and for toddlers because we all know how cow's milk is a culprit in phlegm-forming! And it's also perfect for working moms like me who couldn't spend a long time working in the kitchen.
Have you ever tried making your own milk?
Except breast milk, of course!
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