Post #336635 by The Gnomon on Fri, Oct 5, 2007 11:13 AM

On 2007-10-05 08:45, leisure master wrote:
In the "First Minute" of the recipe, the ratio of almond milk to sugar is not clear to me - you seem to be using a small blender with a container that is not wider at the top or bottom, while I only have a traditional blender that is much wider at the top than the bottom, so I think it will take a lot more sugar than I need to fill it so the liquid is close to the top.

Do you have a sense of the ratio I should use (like 1 cup sugar for every X ounces of almond milk)? Even a guess would be good because your guess would be MUCH better than my guess.

Eyeballing it is good enough, but I wouldn't do that in the odd shaped blender.

In the pic below, you can see the sugar that has settled to the bottom. I poured it through the milk, so it's wet and has turned to its natural color. That is about one-third of the combined volumes of the milk and the sugar.

Keep in mind that the mixture shown also contains the rose and orange flower water and the rum. The ratio shown is a bit sweeter than I like, especially, since I have powerful rock candy syrup on hand. My orgeat doesn't need to be that sweet. The batch shown would have been better had I used a little less sugar.

I think that if you use a 3:1 volume ratio you'll be fine. The ratio used in the photo was more like 2:1. You could, for example, dump one cup of sugar in the blender followed by three cups of almond milk. Total of four cups so far, which is about right for a five cup blender.

Then add several drops of rose water and orange flower water; then about 2 jiggers (3 oz) of rum. Blend for a few seconds, then taste it. There's room in the blender to adjust the sweetness by adding either more sugar or more milk. If you add anything, blend again for a few seconds, then let it sit. Once the froth has all floated to the top, suck it off with a drinking straw.

About the froth. It is slightly chalky but tastes just like the finished orgeat you're trying to remove it from. It is just as sweet, has the same flavors, it's just chalky and cloudy. I mainly send it into the kitchen sink and down the drain, but it's actually OK for drinks, especially, drinks that are not intended to be transparent. So, sometimes I spoon most of the froth off the top and put that into a small container and then vacuum off the rest to tidy up the finished orgeat.

Before you start, have a container to put it in. It will be less than 5 cups (40 oz), so you could re-use two 20 oz plastic water bottles if worse comes to worse. If you don't have one, pick up a cheap funnel in the grocery store cooking equipment section.