The Healthy Baker's Pantry

Whether you're making cakes, cookies, yeast breads, quick breads, muffins, tarts or puddings, almonds can help you produce a more wholesome result. Priscilla Martel, a culinary consultant and cookbook author with a special interest in almonds, outlines some of the ways that almonds—in their many formats—can stand in for less healthful ingredients:

Almond flour: This product, made by grinding blanched or natural almonds to a powder, tends to be finer than almond meal. European pastry chefs use almond flour in several spongecake formulas, such as the one for the French gâteau Joconde.

"Because almond flour binds water and has its own natural fat, it tenderizes and improves the mouthfeel of items like muffins and cakes made with whole grains," says Martel. "Adding almond flour would be a great way to create a more tender oatmeal-currant muffin."

In a basic butter cookie, pie crust or quick bread, you can easily substitute 20 to 25 percent of the refined wheat flour with almond flour, Martel says. In a génoise, the result will be a little denser but with a lovely toastiness and nut aroma.

You can make your own almond flour in a food processor. For the finest texture, start with slivered or sliced almonds instead of whole nuts.

Do you have customers with gluten allergies? Don't overlook the usefulness of almond flour in gluten-free formulas. Most gluten-free baking blends contain starches and gums that don't enhance flavor.

Almond butter: This roasted nut butter can replace natural peanut butter in any application, such as cookies or energy bars. You can add it to ganache or buttercreams, where it can substitute for up to half the butter. Almond butter is roughly 50 percent fat by weight. Consider finishing a custard with almond butter instead of dairy butter, suggests Martel.

Learn to make Almond Scones with almond flour and chopped almonds in this video demo from the Culinary Institute of America kitchens.