Badam Milk / Sweetened Almond milk

We visited family this memorial day weekend. My in-laws who returned from India recently had brought Chiroti from Bangalore. Chiroti is a dessert that is nothing but flaky pastry deep fried and served with almond milk. You can say it is simply puff pastry in the shape of a circle that is deep fried. This is something that is served in weddings. He had brought a pack of MTR instant almond milk mix to go with it. All you have to do is heat milk and add that powder to it. I was mixing up that almond milk to serve the dessert. When I tasted it, it tasted just sugary no flavor of almonds at all. When I checked the ingredients, the packet said it has 82% sugar and about 8% almond; I doubt this number very much - there was absolutely no flavor of almond in it. So, here is to make almond milk drink or Badam Kheer or Badam milk from scratch which tastes like almond and not too sweet at all. If you have a sweet tooth, you can always add more sugar.

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Ingredients: 
Raw Whole almonds - 1 1/2 cups (You could use already blanched almonds to skip the blanching process)
Milk - 8 cups
Water - 4 cups plus more for blanching process (See Notes)
Cardamom - 10 - 12
Sugar - 3/4 cup - 1 cup as per taste (I used 1 cup)
Saffron strands - few

 

Method:
In a skillet, lightly toast the almonds. After they are toasted, add enough water to cover the almonds to the same skillet. Bring it to a boil. Let the water boil for 2 minutes. Turn off the heat and using a slotted spoon, remove the almonds and put them in a bowl of cold water. After about 5 minutes, you should be able to peel the skin away very easily. Remove the skin and take all the almonds in a blender. Add the cardamom pods to that and blend adding little by little water (part of the 4 cups) to a smooth paste.
In a heavy bottomed pan, heat the milk. When it has heated up, add the ground almond paste, saffron strands and stir. Add the remaining water from the 4 cups and stir frequently to prevent burning. When it starts boiling, add sugar and mix. Let it come to a full boil with lot of foam on the top. Turn off the heat. Serve hot, warm or chill in the refrigerator and serve.

Notes:
You could use all milk and not use water at all. I did not want it to be so heavy with almonds and all of the milk. If you use the already blanched almonds, lightly toast them and grind with milk or water and proceed.

Enjoy.

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