My way of making almond milk is very easy, no need for a nut bag or waiting ages for it to strain through. Almond milk is very useful for puddings, smoothies and other drinks especially if you can’t eat dairy.

Ingredients are just 1 cup of natural almonds and filtered water. Soak the almonds in water for at least 12 hours, and up to 36 hours, this activates them and also as you can see the almonds swell up and it’s much easier to extract the goodness from them.

Then rinse the almonds in a sieve under running water, do not use the soaking water to make your milk. Next put the almonds along with 3 cups of filtered water in a blender and blitz for 1 minute.

If you have a fine sieve that is ideal, if your sieve is a bit open then add a piece of muslin or scolded chux cloth to the inside of the sieve and pour the liquid in. Then I use a spoon to help coax it through the sieve.

Next I like to spoon all the pulp back  into the blender and add another 2 cups of water and blitz again for just 30 seconds and then sieve again. Some people use nut bags to sieve their nut milk but I think that is tedious and not necessary, they are a pain to clean and it’s hard to help the mixture through with your spoon. Using a sieve  takes just a few minutes and you can put your sieve in the dishwasher afterwards.

Here you can see the pulp is quite dry and I have about 1 litre of creamy almind milk.

Use a funnel to put the milk in a bottle and store in the fridge for up to 3 days.

Even though the pulp really does not have much flavour left in it I like to spread it out on piece of baking paper and dry it in a low oven until completely dry, it’s a bit stuck together at this stage so I blitz it in the food processor for a while to turn it into almond flour, then store in a glass jar, it can be used for baking or thinking sauces.My favourite use of almond milk is to make these chia seed puddings. Simply mix 1/2 cup of chia seeds to 2 cups of almond milk, the chia seeds will absorb the milk and set quite firm, that’s the basic recipe. Then add flavourings of your choice before the mixture sets, here I have used a few tablespoons of plums, frozen when in season then stewed, without sugar of course, plus a bit of natural vanilla essence topped with more plums. Alternatively you could use raw cacao powder with some stevia for a yummy chocolate pudding.