Recipe: Cashew Milk …quick and easy!

Running out of milk used to be a traumatic thing at our house! You needed milk for almost every meal. I wish I’d known then how easy it is to make nut milk!
Like most things in life, it’s not that hard to do stuff, once you break it down into steps! For this recipe, I use the $5 blender I found at Goodwill and for the strainer, I use a ‘paint strainer’ I got from Home Depot, 2 for ~ $3.50.
I first made almond milk and was quite proud of myself! But, actually almond milk has a stronger flavor than some of the other milks. If you’d prefer a more neutral flavor, try oats, coconut or hazelnuts, or my personal favorite so far: Cashew Milk. I have been using this lately in my coffee as a replacement for cream, and it works (for me!) That’s saying quite a lot, because I don’t allow anything else in my coffee: not soy milk, not almond milk, not coconut milk. But this homemade cashew milk is indescribably smooth perfection.
Cashew Milk
1 C raw cashews (not roasted or salted)
1/8 C of raisins or pitted dates (Optional, for sweetness)
3 C filtered water
Soak for 6 hours or longer at room temperature or in the refrigerator. Dump entire mixture of soaked nuts, raisins and water into a blender. Blend on high until the mixture is smooth (2-3 minutes in an old, basic blender like mine.)
Put your strainer back over a 1/2 gallon pitcher. Pour the mixture from the blender into the strainer bag. Lift the bag and squeeze all liquid into the pitcher. Save the dry pulpy mixture in the bag for use in muffins or cookies, or just toss it out and don’t worry about it!
For extra zing, you can add:
1 sprinkle of Himalayan salt (Optional)
1/8 tsp of vanilla
1/8 tsp of cinnamon or nutmeg
Serve fresh and it tastes like a smoothie already! I like it for breakfast on soaked chia seeds with a banana. Or as I said, it even works in coffee! To make it into a dessert, or to tempt a naysayer, try adding cacao powder and/or agave. 🙂
Alternates:
Now that I’m in the habit of making this milk, at night I look in my cupboard and choose 1 to 1.5 C of any kind of nuts (e.g. walnut, hazelnut, almond, cashew), flax seed, sunflower seeds, oats or coconut. Throw it in a jar with some dates or raisins and 3 C water. Then the next morning, I blend and strain it. Sometimes I drink a cup before straining, but usually that isn’t appealing. I’d rather just eat whole nuts or drink the milk sans pulp.