Baking Organic Nuts & Seeds

Selecting the Right Organic Nuts and Seeds for Your Baking

Adding nuts and seeds to your favourite baking recipes helps to create wonderful new recipes for you and your family to try. They can be vegan and a superfood.

There are diverse ways that you can buy nuts. Of course, you can buy them whole, chopped, or ground. You can also get toasted nuts, allowing you to add extra flavour and texture to your baking. Nut flour can be replaced for all or some of the regular flour in a recipe, so you may want to get some. You can also find nut milk made from almonds, hazelnuts, pecans, and peanuts to make nut butter. Another alternative is nut extracts.

There are distinct types of nuts that you can use in baking, including:

• Walnuts - If you are going to bake with whole, chopped, or ground walnuts, try using raw walnuts or they may get too brown before your creation bakes completely. Black walnuts have a more savoury flavour than regular walnuts.
• Pecans- With a rich taste and a brittle texture, pecans are perfect for many baking projects. Storing them in the freezer will keep them tasting great for up to two years.
• Hazelnuts – Be sure to remove the skin before baking with hazelnuts, as it can be bitter. To remove the skin, toast them in the oven before rubbing them with a clean kitchen towel.
• Almonds – This choice is one of the most versatile. If you want it to look a lighter colour in your baking, then boil the nuts for a minute and run under cold water to remove the skins.
• Pistachios – Pistachios are a favourite to use in many Middle Eastern recipes, cut the salty taste by shelling them yourself.
• Macadamia nuts – This option has a buttery taste that combines well with other nuts.

The term fair trade means that companies producing those products have agreed to meet international standards to protect workers’ rights, pay a fair price for the product, and supply safer working conditions. The term certified organic means these nuts and seeds have come from a farm that has been inspected by the government to prove that they use organic farming practices, including the soil, production, and how the product is packaged.