Almond "Cream Cheese"

 I was browsing through FastPaleo.com again today looking for some new ideas for our weekly meal plan and saw healthylivinghowto.com posted a recipe for "cream cheese" made from almonds. The recipe has you starting with whole almonds, soaking them for hours and blanching them yourself. This is not "fast paleo" to me so of course I needed to rework it with a shortcut. I figured out the equivalent of 1 cup of almonds whole would be about 1 1/4 cups blanched almond flour. From there, it was simple substitution and this recipe came together in about 5 minutes tops.

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cup blanched almond flour
• 1/3 cup water
• 1/2 tsp celtic sea salt
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1 tsp lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until thick and creamy. I used a VitaMix on variable speed 5 or 6. At this point, you're done, but feel free to add in other flavorings to spice it up!

Recipe yields about 1/2 pint (or a bit more if you are really good about scraping out the blender.)

Tips for variations:

• For a sweet cream cheese, add about 1 Tbsp raw honey and a few drops of vanilla when blending
• For an herb cream cheese, add fresh rosemary or thyme and a little extra salt
• Add chopped scallions for scallion cream cheese