Coconut Latte

I've decided I'm too lazy to make coconut milk.

That sounds horrible, because coconut milk is really that easy to make. But I was having trouble getting consistent results, and had one batch go bad quickly after forgtting the soaking coconut on the counter overnight.

Then I discovered two things that make the laziness on this matter acceptable - blending coffee with shredded coconut produces a gorgeous latte-like foam, and it uses significantly less coconut - approximately 36 servings per cup as opposed to 12ish.

Put a cup of coffee and 1.5 teaspoons shredded coconut in a blender (I use a single serving rocket blender). Blend. Pour through a course strainer if you want - this takes out the chunks of coconut, but also reduces the foam, which you may or may not consider desirable.

The primary downside is that making coconut flour is a bit more of an effort, as you have to thoroughly rinse the strained-out coconut, assuming you don't want coffee-flavored flour.

Yum!

Awesomesauce Gingerbread Cake. Also Goat Liver Cake

Oh gosh, I know this isn't the Awesomesauce Cake Blog, but this one turned out ridiculously delicious, and it's nice and seasonal.

Awesomesauce Gingerbread

• Approximately 1/2 cup fat of choice (Anything at least semi-solid at room temp. I used lard this time. Butter oil/ghee is my favorite for baked goods. Coconut oil or plain old butter will work fine. You could even try avocado, which apparently works well in baking as a butter substitute.)
• 2 Tbsp sugar (or the equivalent in your preferred sweetener) 
• 4 eggs (at room temperature)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (I didn't have any, so left it out)
• 1 1/2 cups coconut flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup applesauce 
• 1 Teaspoon cinnamon (or to taste)
• 2 Teaspoons ginger (or to taste)
• 2 tablespoons cocoa powder or blackstrap molasses (you may wish to reduce added sweetener and add 1 tbsp coconut flour if using molasses)
• Ground cloves, ground allspice, grated nutmeg, lemon zest, black pepper to taste (Approx. 1/4 - 1/2 tsp each. Pick and choose which you want depending on what is traditional for you and what you have on hand)
• Optional - shredded carrot, zucchini, or apple, raisins or other dried fruit, nuts, candied ginger, chocolate chips. We added about 1/4 cup of chocolate chips left over from something else, and it was amazing.

Preheat oven to 350F. Mix dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Mix wet ingredients separately, then gradually add dry ingredients to wet ingredients. Or just throw them all in the food processor like I did. Whatever floats your boat. Stir in any extra ingredients you want after you're done with the food processor, if you use one. Bake for about 30 minutes, until it doesn't jiggle and a fork stuck in the center comes out clean (It took me closer to an hour this time, but better to err on the side of caution and check frequently). Makes 1 8" diameter circular cake. 

Note about cocoa powder vs. molasses: I used cocoa powder in making this cake. I have nothing in particular against molasses. As far as sweeteners go, I think it's a comparatively healthy option, what with all the iron and trace minerals, and with a lower glycemic index than many sweeteners. And I certainly wouldn't say that cocoa powder is any less "neolithic" or processed. However, I didn't have any on hand, and cocoa powder provides a similar color and  deep, bitter flavor. 

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Yesterday, I cooked up a goat liver pâté. It didn't turn out very pâté-like. More like meatloaf.


A little disappointing, but it turned out for the best.


LemurBoy isn't crazy about liver, but loves meatloaf. Especially "cheeseburger style" - on lettuce leaves, topped with cheese, mayo, and mustard.


LemurGirl likes liver in pretty much any context in which I've offered it, but hates meatloaf.


So, I called this pâté for LemurGirl, and meatloaf for LemurBoy, and they both enjoyed it.


LemurGirl's quote of the day: "A liver pâté is kind of like a cake except it doesn't taste like one!"

LemurBoy's Paleo Coconut Custard

LemurBoy contribution to Thanksgiving dinner. He just made this all by himself, with just a little help with the oven!

LemurBoy's Paleo Coconut Custard

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup applesauce 
• 1/4 cup zucchini flour (or coconut flour)
• Scant 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 1/2 cups coconut milk
• Coconut flakes

Serves: 6-8

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Blend all ingredients except coconut flakes in food processor until smooth. Pour mixture into ramekins (we used pint sized glass jars), and put a pinch of coconut flakes in each. Place ramekins into a larger pan, and fill pan part way with water. Cover pan, and bake for 30 minutes.

Note: Applesauce made this sweet enough for us, but you might want to use a little added sweetener if cooking for standard taste buds or if you're not using yummy homemade applesauce. Zucchini flour is zucchini that has been shredded, dehydrated, and ground-up. If you're part of the 99.99999999% of households who don't happen to have zucchini flour on hand, I'd imagine coconut flour would work similarly. You could probably even omit it entirely and still get a good custard, but why not take the opportunity to work in an unnoticed serving of veggies?

Awesomesauce Cake II

Happy Birthday, LemurBaby!





This cake is a variation on the chocolate cake I made for LemurGirl's birthday last month:


Awesomesauce Apple Cake

• Approximately 1/2 cup butter oil (Coconut oil or plain butter both have similar properties and should work instead, but I think butter or butter oil really works best flavor-wise if you can tolerate it. Coconut butter might work well - whizzing two cups of coconut in a blender or food processor until pasty (2-10 minutes, depending on how powerful yours is). You might also be able to use nut butter of whatever type you prefer.)
• 1/4 cup sugar (or the equivalent in other sweetener) (see note)
• 4 eggs (at room temperature)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (I didn't have any, so left it out)
• 1 1/2 cups coconut flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup milk (of whatever type you prefer - I used homemade coconut milk)
• 3/4 cup applesauce + more for frosting 
• 1 Teaspoon cinnamon (plus any other spices you want - my applesauce already had cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. If yours doesn't, you probably want to add some)
• Optional - shredded carrot, zucchini, or apple, raisins or other dried fruit, nuts, candied ginger

Preheat oven to 350F. Mix dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Mix wet ingredients separately, then gradually add dry ingredients to wet ingredients (actually, I just threw it all in the food processor - since it's coconut flour, you don't have to worry about overstirring, since there is no gluten to develop). Stir in any extra ingredients you want. Bake for about 30 minutes, until it doesn't jiggle and a fork stuck in the center comes out clean. Makes 1 8" diameter circular cake. 


This cake came out a little on the wet side. Not to the point of being unpresentable, but it got rather brown around the edges before being anywhere close to done in the center. Either a little more coconut flour, a little less applesauce or oil (I'm hesitant to reduce the applesauce, since it's providing flavor), or eliminating the coconut milk would probably help. 


Note on sweetener: I used homemade applesauce made from fresh-picked apples, so it was very sweet and flavorful (This is easy - stick apples, peeled or not, in a crock pot with about a half cup of water and whatever spices you want until soft, blend if you left the skins on and want a smooth sauce). I think I could have left out the sugar entirely, or maybe added just a tablespoon. However, plain old storebought unsweetened applesauce would probably need the 1/4 cup, or maybe even a little more. If using a liquid sweetener, you may need to adjust the amount of other liquid accordingly (ie. reduce the applesauce a little).

Birthday Menu

LemurGirl turns 5 today! Here's what we ate to celebrate:

Pizza Muffins

1/4 cup pepperoni
1/4 cup dried tomatoes
1/4 cup fat of choice
2 tablespoons tomato sauce (I used salsa)
3 eggs
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 tablespoon (or more) oregano
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 350F.

Combine pepperoni, dried tomatoes, spices, fat, tomatoes, and tomato sauce/salsa in food processor. Pulse a few times to mix. Let sit a few minutes to let the tomatoes soak a bit (not necessary if you use tomatoes stored in oil, but ours were pretty dry and hard). Let sit a few minutes, and add a little more coconut flour if it doesn't seem the proper texture (add a tablespoon or less at a time). Add the rest of the ingredients and pulse a few more times. Spoon out into muffin tins (greased or lined). Bake for about 25 minutes, until they don't jiggle and a fork stuck in them comes out clean.

This made 10 muffins for me. I probably could have gotten 12 by making them a little smaller. I think you could cut back on the fat, especially if using tomatoes stored in oil - they were rather greasy. I was kinda hoping enough grease would make them come off the liners easier. No such luck.

There's nothing sacred about the pepperoni. It's a good traditional pizza topping, but mainly just happened to be what I had on hand. Use whatever your favorite toppings are (if you don't want it to be food processed, chop up by hand and stir them in at the end, but I didn't feel like hand-slicing my pepperoni up into little bits). You could probably also throw in some spinach or zucchini or something without hurting anything. Mix some shredded cheese in or sprinkle it on top if you do dairy.

Awesomesauce Chocolate Cake

This came to be because LG requested a chocolate cake with apple frosting. The apple frosting threw me a bit at first. Then I realized "apple frosting" = pureed apple, and is really about as simple as frosting can get.

• Approximately 1/2 cup butter oil (I clarified 1/2 cup of butter and used the results, so it was something less than 1/2 cup. Coconut oil or plain butter both have similar properties and should work instead)
• 1/2 cup sugar (or the equivalent in other sweetener)
• 4 eggs (at room temperature)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (I didn't have any, so left it out)
• 1 cups coconut flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk (of whatever type you prefer - I used homemade coconut milk)
• 1/2 cup cinammon applesauce (I used pureed fresh apple, not jarred applesauce) + more for frosting

Preheat oven to 350F. Mix dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Mix wet ingredients separately, then gradually add dry ingredients to wet ingredients. Bake for about 30 minutes, until it doesn't jiggle and a fork stuck in the center comes out clean. Makes 1 8" diameter circular cake.

This turned out delicious. I'm going to modify it (carrot/apple/spice instead of cocoa, probably) for LemurBaby's birthday next month.

Caveats: As usual, I'm recreating these from memory after the fact, so please tell me something seems wrong. I'm cooking in a desert climate at high altitude, though coconut flour doesn't seem to have as many altitude issues as others. My homemade coconut flour doesn't seem to function quite the same as store-bought (though I'm using roughly the measures used in similar recipes and it turned out well this time), so you may need to use a bit less.

For ice cream, we used Jello created with 1/2 cup water, 1 1/2 cups coconut milk mixed in the ice cream maker. Bad, I know, but easy, and more reliable taste-wise than my from-scratch concoctions.

For dinner we had (at her request), baked chicken and carrots.

Lunchbox Challenged

Paleo Parents is having a Paleo Lunchbox Challenge.

Unfortunately, as homeschoolers, we are inherently Lunchbox Challenged, and not in a way that is conducive to this particular contest. We don't even own lunchboxes.

This is a normal lunch for us:


Scrambled egg with bacon, leftover Shrimp, Sausage, and Summer Squash casserole, and water.


Gratuitous baby picture

Not exactly practical eating after sitting around in a lunchbox for half a day, right?

So, we decided to make a more travel-appropriate lunch.

When I told the kids we were going to make lunchboxes, LemurBoy took it literally, and went out to saw a piece of wood to make a box. This particular plan was perhaps a bit overambitious, but, after some drama at the idea of not creating a permanent lunchbox, they happily settled down with cardboard boxes.


I'm pretty sure LB re-invented the Bento all on his own

With the kids' input, we decided to try to make sandwiches, baked pumpkin, roasted pumpkin seeds, and carrot sticks.

We've been reading The Little House Cookbook. Given the prominence of grains in the diet of the time, this may seem an odd choice for us, but it's full of traditional food recipes, including lots of garden produce, wild game, food preservation, and all that other good stuff. Some of the grainy recipes can be adapted to grain-free alternatives, but there's plenty that require little or no adaptation. It's all set in a kid-appealing context (the Little House series) with plenty of good historical food and lifestyle info.


The cookbook

Since we have little pumpkins coming ripe in the garden, we decided to use those for a Little House-style recipe. We actually used (roughly, anyways) the Hubbard Squash recipe, as it was more appropriate to what we wanted to do than the actual pumpkin recipes, and read about how both pumpkins and other squashes were grown and used.


Little pumpkins (Jack-Be-Little variety, I believe) on the vine

The green beans were also from our garden.

Preheat oven to 350F. Cut tops off pumpkins (or other winter squash) as you would for jack-o-lantern, or just slice them in half. Unless you specifically want to preserve the cute pumpkin shape, cutting them down the middle is going to be much easier. De-seed. I saved the seeds for roasting. Rub inside of pumpkin with an heat-appropriate fat (recipe suggests butter. I used bacon grease), and spice as desired. For these, I used a mixture of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and a touch of salt, so they'd be like pumpkin pies. You could probably drizzle a little maple syrup or other sweetener to make them more dessert like. A more savory spice mix works well, too. Put the pumpkins skin-side down in a baking tray, and fill the tray about 1/2 inch full of water. Bake until soft enough to poke with a fork - 1.5-2 hours.

For roasted pumpkin seeds, clean pulpy bits from seeds (this is time consuming and irritating). Lightly coat with oil, spice and salt as desired (I used a random mix including garlic powder, paprika, onion powder, and other stuff that I'm not sure of), and spread in a single layer on a baking tray. Bake at 350 until golden brown, or about 20-30 minutes.

Next time I make them, I'll plan ahead more and soak them in salt water for 24 hours first. This reduces the phytic acid, an anti-nutrient. Also, it makes them salty.

I've been experimenting with coconut flour lately. Coconut flour is made from defatted coconut (if the fat is there, it turns into coconut butter intead of flour), and is rather expensive. Making coconut milk from shredded coconut results in lots of coconut pulp... or defatted coconut. So now I'm drying the pulp and blendering it up into flour, and I've been trying various recipes to see if it seems to perform the same as store-bought coconut flour (which I've never bought). I've made cookies and pancakes with good success, so we decided to try some sandwich bread.

This (or minor variations thereof) is the most common pure coconut flour recipe. I cut it in half, replaced most of the oil with pear puree (both primarily for cost reasons), and didn't include added sweetener.


Waiting for the bread to bake.

It came out very flat. I'm not certain our baking powder, which well over a year old and not particularly well-stored, is still active. So I ended up chopping the loaf into three sections, then in half length-wise, sub style, rather than doing more traditional sandwich slices.

While everything cooked (I did everything in the oven at once, just for varying lengths of time), LB cut up carrot sticks, and made himself some deviled eggs, too.


LB cutting carrot sticks

I fried up some thinly sliced steak that had been marinating in the fridge, and used that in LB and my sandwiches. LG declared she didn't want meat - she wanted a carrot sandwich. So that's what she had.

I also hard boiled some eggs, since we were out.

The results:


LG's finished lunch - Carrot sandwich on coconut bread (mostly eaten), green beans, hard boiled egg, baked pumpkin, roasted pumpkin seeds.


LB's lunch - Coconut bread sandwich with steak strips, deviled eggs, baked pumpkin, carrot sticks and green beans, roasted pumpkin seeds.


Nomming


Once again, a gratuitous baby eating vegetables shot

The bread ended up tasting very eggy (which was also my experience when making muffins). I have a feeling I have to use a larger quantity of the homemade flour than I would of store-bought. The cookies I made the other day turned out very cookie-like, and not particularly eggy, but in that case I kept adding flour until the dough held together.

The kids liked it, regardless.

The pumpkin was not a huge hit with the older kids. Honestly, one of them turned out amazing - sweet and full of pumpkiny flavor, but the other three were kind of bland. Not horrible, and they probably would have been very good with some butter and maple syrup, but not nearly so tasty as the other one.

Unfortunately, many squashes don't seem to play well with me and the baby's digestive systems. Most unfortunate, since we're the ones who like them!

Everyone loved the pumpkin seeds. We had some seeds from other squash mixed in there too, and those turned out just as good. We'll be saving up our squash seeds from now on to make bigger batches.

Practicality:

This is not a lunch you can throw together the morning of. It took hours to get everything together - some time could be cut from that with more experience (not fumbling with the bread recipe, cutting the pumpkins in a simpler way), but much was unavoidable baking time. However, most of it could be made in quantity in advance and most of the individual recipes weren't all that time consuming (requiring more baking time than actual prep time). The pumpkin, while good warm, would be best for a lunchbox if cooked ahead of time and chilled. These would be very simple to prep and throw in the oven while something else was cooking. The pumpkin seeds keep for a while if stored properly, so it would be easy to make a big batch once and dole them out appropriately. I don't know how well the bread keeps, and therefore I don't know whether it would be practical to make a big batch at once.

As a bonus, here's an actual "lunch" that got taken to work:

An actual "lunch" box (thermos, rather) - Leftover Mock Split Pea Soup with a sliced hard boiled egg, some pumpkin chunks, and (not visible) chunks of sausage. Also not pictured - a jar of coffee with coconut milk.

I work a 12+ hour night shift one night a week, at least half of which is moderately active, so I have to have a midnight meal. I generally stick leftovers in a thermos, as in the above photo.

On my day shifts, I usually take a salad with lots of stuff on it, and often some nuts, fruit, or the like. Sometimes leftovers that can be kept in the thermos or don't require reheating. Maybe I'll photograph that, too.

Mad Science

I think I just crossed over into firm Mad Kitchen Scientist territory. Today I jarred up our latest batch of lacto-fermented zucchini pickles. Putting it in the fridge, I noticed a jar of white stuff shoved in the back.

Great. Someone had opened up a can of coconut milk without using what I already had in there, and the old one had probably gone bad by now. Since making coconut milk isn't exactly an effortless activity, this irritated me a bit.

I opened it and sniffed it. It smelled a little sour, but not in a bad way. It had thickened up a little.

So what did I do? Tasted it.

I had accidentally made coconut milk yogurt. It wasn't fabulous, but not inedible, either. I've had coconut milk that's gone rancid, and that's gross. This wasn't like that at all.

The lid I had been using on the jar of coconut milk was labeled sauerkraut, and given our recent zuccini-pickle kick, the jar was likely previously used for fermented food as well. Whichever the source, it was apparently inoculated with lactobacillus.

So I dumped another cup of coconut milk in, and stuck it back in the fridge to see what would happen. I guess we'll see what happens in a few days, if the bites I took of it earlier don't kill me.

Zucchini Pineapple Coconut Muffins

Based on the Elena's Pantry recipe for Zucchini Chocolate Chip Muffins, these are entirely fruit-sweetened.

• 8 oz can of pineapple in its own juice (tidbits or crushed - if you get rings or bigger chunks, you'll want to chop them up. I suppose you could use fresh pineapple plus a few tablespoons of sweetener if you prefer)
• Enough shredded zucchini to make 1 1/2 cups when combined with drained pineapple (a bit more than 1 cup)
• 1/3 cup coconut flour
• 2 eggs
• Scant 1/4 teaspoon salt (I used 1/4 teaspoon, and they ended up a touch on the salty side)
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 1/3 cup shredded coconut + extra to sprinkle on top.

Drain juice from pineapple (get as much out as you can - you want as much liquid as you can get for the next step, and for the remaining pineapple to be as dry as possible). Simmer pineapple juice in a small saucepan for a while to reduce. I didn't measure the end product exactly - probably a tablespoon or two.

Preheat oven to 350F.

Combine pineapple and zucchini. Squeeze out excess liquid.

Combine coconut flour, salt, and baking soda in one bowl. Combine wet ingredients, zucchini, and pineapple in another bowl, then mix in dry ingredients.

Spoon batter into muffin tin (I suggest liners - greasing them didn't work well for me). Sprinkle each muffin with a little shredded coconut.

Bake 18-22 minutes for mini muffins, or 25-30 minutes for larger muffins. Or longer - start there and see how they are.

This recipe makes 6 mediumish muffins, or 12 mini-muffins.


I highly suggest being sure to squeeze out the excess liquid and using liners...

When I make them again, I think I'll reduce the coconut oil to 2 tbsp and cook them a little longer. They were a bit on the greasy side, and the bottoms weren't particularly done.

For the coconut flour, I used the leftover pulp from making coconut milk (as that's basically what coconut flour is - coconut that has been defatted and finely ground. Convenient, right?). Just straight from the blender, with as much of the milk squeezed out as possible - I didn't dry it out first, as the homemade coconut flour recipes recommend - seems like a waste of energy, and easier just to cut back on the wet ingredients a bit if necessary. As such, I have no idea if it behaved anything like commercial coconut flour, as I've never baked with it. But they were acceptable for our purposes.

Comments on the original recipe have suggestions for making them eggless with ground flaxseed and/or applesauce.

Coconut Donut Holes

In my Coconut Chicken Nuggets post, I mentioned that I'd need to try donut holes very soon.

I wasn't joking about the "very" part. The idea was too good to resist trying immediately.

I actually did measure out this recipe while making it, so all measurements are accurate.

* 1 egg (I'm wondering if this would work with pureed apple or banana for those avoiding eggs)
* Approximately 1/3 cup shredded coconut
* Spices (I used 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, some freshly grated nutmeg, and a pinch of ground cardamom. A little bit of vanilla would probably be good (I meant to add that, but forgot). Maybe even some cocoa powder.)
* Sweetener (optional)
* Fat of choice for frying

Break egg into bowl and mix. Add coconut 1 tablespoon at a time until you get a dough that holds together and keeps its shape - It took 5 tablespoons for me. Keep in mind that it's easier to add more coconut than more egg, so go slow with the coconut. Mix spices into dough. Roll into little balls a bit smaller than you want to donut holes to be (they'll puff up a bit while cooking).

Heat fat. When hot enough, drop balls of dough into it. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes, rolling them around as necessary to cook thoroughly. Remove from pan and let cool a bit before eating. I think they're best still warm, but I stuck one in the fridge for a while to see how it would hold up, and it was still tasty.

This made 8 donut holes for me.

About sweetener: Since coconut is naturally on the sweet side, these don't desperately need any added sweetener. Both kids liked them unsweetened. Leaving them unsweetened probably also helps with portion control.

But if your goal is authenticity, or if you're making these for people with conventional taste buds, you'll want to add a little bit of sweetener.

If the idea of deep (or, in this case, more than a light coating but not particularly deep) fat frying intimidates you, don't stress it. This was really the first time I've done it. I just dumped about 1/2 inch of bacon grease in a little saucepan, heated it, and fried them up.

Thus ends Impromptu Fried Food Day. I'm way too stuffed for anything else!

Ongoing coconut milk experimentation

We got out shredded coconut yesterday.

The box was much smaller than I expected. Not unreasonably small - the 8oz bags are about half of typical 16oz size, and they're compressible, so 12 can fit in a pretty small space. But I think there's an expectation, given the cost, that it's going to be a huge box. The shreds themselves were smaller, too - it is very finely shredded, not like the normal store shredded coconut. This is just fine for our purposes, really.

This time, I mixed 1 cup of coconut with 2 cups very hot water, left it to sit for several hours, and then blended it. It came out VERY thick, and not particularly smooth, but not as grainy as the previous batch, either. A lot of the liquid was absorbed, and pressing it through the strainer, I only got about a half cup of milk. That won't do!

I blended it some more, and added another cup or so of water. That produced about 2 cups of liquid of quite acceptable quality. I tried it in my coffee this morning, and it was fine.

I ate some of the leftover coconut pulp along with some pineapple for dessert. I'll have to figure out something fun to do with the rest of it. I want to experiment with coconut flour baking, and this may be a way to do it without using up our supply (because it won't get bought again if it isn't a savings over the canned milk!). Another option is to try making a second-press for just drinking straight.

There was a solid layer on top this morning (presumably the oil). Not a bad thing, since that means the oils are there and the emulsifiers aren't, but it makes it a touch hard to use. I can either make it in smaller quantities and store it in one of our lidded Magic Bullet knock-off cups for easy re-blending in the morning, or just get it out first thing and leave it on the counter until it comes up to temperature.

Last time I made coconut milk from shredded coconut, the resulting milk was very sweet and directly drinkable. This was more like standard coconut milk - not bad, but not quite so horchata-like. I kind of suspect the other coconut we used (a foreign brand) may have had added sweetener that wasn't listed on the label.

Next time (after we use the milk I already made, plus the 2 cans I already (accidentally) opened before the coconut arrived, so it could be a few days), I'm going to try adding just enough water to thoroughly wet the coconut, leave it soaking overnight, blend that, and then add more water to get to the desired consistency. I think this will allow more contact with the blender blades, and get it even smoother.

I'm sure this all sounds like a lot of work for coconut milk compared to just opening the can, but it really comes out to about 5 minutes of actual doing-stuff, so it's worth it, especially if done in large enough quantity - I'm likely to start doing a quart at a time once I get the process down.

And if this all works out, I think that next time we're going to go for the 22lb bag, which brings the cost down to $0.14/oz of shredded coconut, as opposed to about $0.22/oz now.

Coconut milk

We go through a lot of coconut milk around here.

Personally, I'm agnostic on the virtues or lack thereof of dairy. I don't think it's the devil. The kids eat dairy products in moderation. We've recently limited LemurGirl from large doses, especially things that are likely to have added casein, due to behavioral issues, but small quantities are ok - she was sensitive to dairy as an infant, too. I avoid even trace amounts, because the baby has screaming fits when I do eat it, so I use coconut milk in most situations that call for milk, because I see it as the best combination of health and cost-effectiveness.

However, it's still not particularly cheap.

I've looked at making coconut milk before, but haven't. Maybe because so many of the recipes call for fresh coconut; maybe because conventional stores don't seem to sell unsweetened shredded coconut. I can't quite remember. Yesterday I decided that it *had* to be possible, looked again, and found these two recipes:

http://wholenewmom.com/recipes/make-your-own-coconut-milk/
http://www.elanaspantry.com/diy-coconut-milk/

I tried it out today. We found some little 2-ounce packages of unsweetened shredded coconut locally. This came out to a bit less than a cup, so I mixed it with 3 cups of water (roughly the concentration in the first recipe), then whizzed it for a while in the vitamix.

It came out tasting fresh, sweet, and coconutty. So much nicer than the canned coconut milk, which tastes kind of stale in comparison! I was instantly converted. You can easily drink this stuff straight. It was very thin compared to the canned milk, though. More like nonfat milk than cream. For some applications this is good. As a coffee creamer or curry additive (my usual uses for it), it may need to be more concentrated. It's also a little... chewy. You end up with a mouthful of coconut solids. Not horrible, but not really desirable, either.

We have another little bag, so I'm going to try it again tomorrow-ish, and try soaking the coconut for several hours first to see if that helps with either or both issues.

The first recipe uses 1 cup coconut to 4 cups water. The second uses 1 to 2. Amazon has organic shredded coconut for approximately $2/8oz bag. So that would make approximately 12 cups of coconut milk, or about the equivalent of 7 cans (most cans are about 13.5oz, or a bit less than 2 cups).

Each can costs $1.41 with case discount. Each can equivalent would cost $0.28.

That's kind of a huge savings on something that we use a lot!

Now, the coconut milk I made today ended up being very thin. Maybe blending more or pre-soaking will help with that, but it's very possible we'll end up using something closer to the 1:2 concentration for a lot of our uses. But still, that's $0.56 per can equivalent.

But wait, it gets better! The canned coconut milk we're buying is some random Thai brand. It has preservatives, is probably not organically grown, and is probably in a can lined with BPA-containing plastic. The organic, BPA-free brand of canned milk, ordered through Amazon, is more than twice as expensive. The shredded coconut we'd be buying is organic and sulfite/preservative-free.

I expect we'll end up going through more of it than we have been because it tastes so good! Plus shredded coconut means I can also grind it up (or leave it as-is) and use it as flour for baking. We'll probably still continue to use canned for some things, like curries, which need to be thick and creamy.

Even considering that, if I can get it to a point where it works well for coffee, I think it will be a big help for our budget.

(If this works for us, we may consider the 22lb bag, which would bring the cost down to about $0.18/can equivalent at the higher dilution, but would require repackaging and lots of freezer space).

Update: As I expected, yesterday's was too watery to work well as coffee creamer. I tried it again today, soaking the coconut for several hours first, and using less water. I couldn't tell you exactly what concentration, because I threw the remains of yesterday's in as well, but something in between 1:2 and 1:4. I also vitamixed it for a full three minutes.

It turned out much creamier, but still a bit on the chewy side, so I strained those out. It still seems much creamier than yesterday's even without the solids, though still thinner than canned. I tried it in the remaining coffee from this morning, and it seemed to work out well. Then I threw the strained out solids into a smoothie. It's possible they'd work for baking, too.