Make Your Own (Cheaper!) Almond Flour

While I’m loving all of the almond-flour-based goodies coming out of my kitchen lately, unfortunately, almond flour isn’t cheap.

At first, I considered this a natural way to manage my baking habit– after all, I wouldn’t want to use such an expensive ingredient so often— but before long, my sweet tooth won out, and my bag of almond flour quickly disappeared.

I hate it when that happens.

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Luckily, the lack of almond flour in my pantry gave me the perfect reason to try making my own almond flour.

I had no idea if a homemade version would work as well as my favorite Honeyville brand, but I figured it was worth a shot!

(And if you happen to have a Trader Joe’s in your area, blanched slivered almonds are pretty affordable!)

For my first attempt at homemade almond flour, I used a food processor to grind the almonds.

I was scared of turning my almonds into almond butter, so I used the “pulse” function to prevent the almonds from getting too blended. After a couple minutes of pulsing, I had a pretty good almond flour!

A little grainier than the Honeyville brand, but good enough.

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Next, I tried grinding the almonds in my Vitamix.

Since this blender is SO powerful, it only took about 20 seconds to turn one cup of almonds into a very fine flour! Definitely a better texture than using the food processor, so this will be the method I use from now on.

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Of course, simply grinding the flours wasn’t enough to know if they would really work in baking. I had to give them a test-run!

Oh, the things I must do for research.

I made a batch of almond flour sugar cookies, using one cup of the flour from the Vitamix and one cup of the flour from the food processor, and they turned out wonderfully! Perhaps just slightly grainier, thanks to the batch from the food processor, but still perfectly tasty and with a great texture.

I’ll definitely be using the homemade flour again!

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Now, for the important part.

How does the cost of making homemade flour compare to purchasing the Honeyville brand?

Let’s do the math:

8 oz. blanched slivered almonds (from my local Trader Joe’s) currently costs $2.49. That comes to about $0.31 per ounce.

5 lbs. of Honeyville Blanched Almond Flour (from Amazon with free shipping) currently costs $36.99. That comes to $0.46 per ounce.

So, that means you’d save $12.19 for each 5 lbs of almond flour that you make yourself.

Not bad! Still not as cheap as traditional flour, to be certain, but definitely worth it for those us wanting a grain-free option.

A few helpful tips for making your own almond flour:

• One cup of slivered almonds = about one cup of almond flour. 

• One 8 oz. bag of these raw blanched slivered almonds turned into exactly 2 cups of almond flour–> just what you need for my cookie recipe!

• I only processed one cup of almonds at a time, as I was afraid that trying to blend too much at once would create an uneven texture.

• If you don’t mind seeing specks of brown in your resulting baked goods, you can also use regular (non-blanched) almonds for a similar result.

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I hope this helps you all create even more almond-flour-based goodies in the future!

Reader Feedback: Have you tried making your own flours before? Any good sources to share for cheaper blanched almonds or almond flour?