With its potent almond flavor and subtle notes of cherry, homemade almond extract is easy to make and delicious in drinks, cakes and desserts. Its the perfect substitute for almond extract or creme de noyeaux liqueur thats often colored with cheap red dye. Theres a few different ways you can make it, read on and Ill explain.
Ask people of a certain age about canning and you might here stories of peach jam or cherry jelly being cooked with a handful of the pits or kernels removed from the shell. The seeds arent eaten, but they lend a subtle almond taste to the finished preserve. As you might be suspecting, the almond flavor hidden in stone fruit pits is the key to making a good extract.
Pure almond extract is made from almonds, or from the pits of stone fruits that have been cold pressed and combined with alcohol and water. Imitation almond extract, on the other hand, is made from synthetic materials made to taste like the flavor extracted from the almonds or stone fruits.
How to Use Homemade Almond Extract
Theres so many things you can make with this. Baked goods, fruit or dairy based desserts and drinks are classic. Heres a few examples of things you can make with it.
- Use it to make homemade amaretto ice cream.
- Add a splash to just about any fruit sauce or coulis.
- Anything cream based, like amaretto ice cream and panna cotta.
- Add to fruit preserves like jams, jellies, fruit butters and freezer jams.
- Drinks, especially ones with cherry flavors or dairy based drinks.
- Add a splash to warm homemade nut milk.
- One of my favorites is using it as a flavoring for compound gins and liqueurs. If you make something like nocino or cassis you can throw a few seeds in, or finish it with a splash before bottling.
How to Make Almond Extract
Im using wild plums but peach, apricot, plum or cherry pits will work fine too. Take a tip from my friend Ellen Zachos and save the pits in the freezer until you need them. Her almond joy cocktail sounds great too!
Some recipes claim to use chopped almonds or blanched almonds, but, that simply doesnt work. I assume this is a conflation of bitter and sweet almonds. Traditionally bitter almonds are used to make almond extract. However, theyre currently banned in the United States and Europe as they can be dangerous mishandled.
Almond extract is super easy to make at home. The first step is drying the stone fruit pits. The s below describe the process.
Once the pits are dried and cracked you remove as many shell fragments as you can. It doesnt have to be perfect.
After the mixture has macerated for at least a month, strain it, and sweeten it to taste. You can use maple syrup or simple syrup to keep it light in color.
Ive also made extracts of cherry pits by simply crushing the shell and seed together after sifting to make my Siberian Bird Cherry Cake.
Sometimes vanilla bean is added, and you could add a few leaves of dried or fresh sweet scented garlium (Galium triflofum) as its such a nice vanilla substitute.
Homemade Almond Extract – Results!
FAQ
Is almond extract actually made from almonds?
Why does almond extract not taste like almonds?
Is almond extract made from peach pits?
How is almond extract made?
Almond extract can be produced in two ways. Pure almond extract involves cold pressing the almonds and combining them with alcohol and water. Imitation almond extract is created using synthetic materials to mimic the flavor of the extracts from almonds or stone fruits.
What can be made with raw almonds?
You can grind them to make a flour that goes great with fruits and yogurt, use them in place of nuts to make pesto, make a mousse or pate, add to your granola, and even make sauce or almond milk.
Where did almond extract come from?
Almond extract — the natural version — comes from almonds, which are native to the Middle East. Historians believe that almond trees were among the first domesticated fruit trees. From the Middle East, almonds would eventually reach Greece and then Rome. Almonds were traded throughout the first millennium into the Middle Ages.
What is pure almond extract?
Pure almond extract consists of bitter almond oil, alcohol, and water. The almond oil is the source of the flavor, which comes from a compound in the oil called benzaldehyde. You can find benzaldehyde in the pits of other fruits, which is why they are sometimes used to make almond extract.