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!

While we're on this zucchini kick...

Zucchini Frappuccino
• 1 tray coffee ice cubes (this is what we do if we have leftover coffee)
• 1 smallish zucchini
• enough liquid (coffee, milk of some sort, water) so that the blender will work (I needed like 1/4 cup)
• Optional: Sweetener, ripe banana, flavored syrup, cocoa powder, etc. to taste

Put stuff in blender. Blend. Makes about one "venti" or two "tall" servings.

Other recipes for frappuccino-knockoffs I've seen call for plain ice cubes/crushed ice + strong coffee. That would presumably work, too. Coffee ice cubes were what I happened to have on hand. If you go that route, I'd think you'd want to blend all ingredients except ice well first, then you can blend the ice just until it gets to the right texture. (Updated: I tried this method because we didn't have any more coffee ice cubes, and it didn't work well for me. The coffee was still slightly warm when I tried, and the blender too efficient at blending ice, so it just ended up watery, not icy, and not very good. I drank it anyways because I had to go to work. Update 2: Coffee ice cube method definitely works better. And paddypan squash is just as satisfactory as zucchini.)

It doesn't taste like zucchini, with a caveat - our garden zucchinis may be more mild flavored than zucchinis found at the store. If your attempts at making zucchini-stuff come out too strongly zucchini flavored, peeling may help - the peel, especially of older/larger zucchinis, has a bitter flavor. Add zucchini gradually to get a balance between creaminess and zucchininess, and be sure you use sweetener or some other flavoring. Or track down someone with a garden. This time of year they'll probably be happy to unload some zucchini.

If you try any of my crazy recipes, please let me know how it turns out, even if you think it's blech! I always pass them by at least one other set of tastebuds (in this case, a former Starbucks employee), but none of us around here could really be said to have typical American tastes, so it's possible that they're actually all intolerable to anyone who isn't nutso like us. If so, I'd like to know! After all, it's been years since I've had an actual frappuccino.