Post #530980 by Chinarose on Tue, May 18, 2010 11:47 AM

Me, I enjoy doing the Mad Scientist thing in the kitchen and bar so I don't consider it work.

I agree 100%. For me, this is one of my hobbies and loves. It's great fun making my own mixers for tiki drinks. I've been amazed at how much better my own stuff tastes from the store-bought.

I will say that I love Trader Tiki's cinnamon syrup, but I have never found an orgeat that I like as much as my homemade stuff. I use raw almonds (in bulk from Whole Foods), a syrup of turbinado sugar and water, orange flower water, rose water and almond extact). I do a quick soaking method with the almond meal and heating it up on the stove, letting that sit several hours, then straining and squeezing through cheesecloth. It has an amazing softness and tastes of sweet toasty almonds, caramel and a hint of floral essence.

I used the recipe that Kaiser Penguin posted with a few modifications. I use a lot more almonds, almost twice as much. I blanch the almonds, lightly toast them in the oven and then make a course almond meal/flour by pulsing the toasted, blanched almonds in the food processor. I soaked the almond meal for about 2 hours in a pot with boiled water. I strained through cheesecloth and squeezed, then put the almond milk back into the almond meal solids heated again on the stove, squeezed/strained again without soaking, then I did that all one more time. I added the sugar syrup and essences. Then I made myself a kick-ass Mai Tai that blew my mind.