Whether you’re looking for gluten-free alternatives or want to add nutty flavor to your baked goods, almond flour is an ingredient worth stocking in your pantry. Our best almond flour recipes include plenty of baked goods, like soft, colorful Persian cookies, as well as go-to breakfasts (almond flour pancakes and flourless blueberry muffins, anyone?). While many of these recipes are completely gluten-free, plenty of them pair almond flour with wheat flour, relying on the almond’s nutty flavor to enhance the taste and texture of various baked goods: Almond flour anchors a light joconde sponge and gives mini semolina cakes a moist, marzipan-like center.
When shopping for almond flour, you’ll see quite a few types at the store. What’s the difference between blanched and unblanched almond flour? The nuts in blanched almond flour have been flashed in boiling water and stripped of their skins, giving the resulting flour a creamier color (it’s often used in French macarons). Unblanched almond flour is just as finely ground, but since the almonds’ skins haven’t been removed, it will have some specks of dark brown. Appearances aside, these two flours function in the exact same way and can be used interchangeably. Almond meal is ground slightly coarser, but in most cases can be used as a substitute for almond flour too.