Since my business moved in with a bakery a couple months ago I’ve been having bad rashes around my mouth… I just got my blood test results back for possible food allergies.
I need to stay away from almonds forever (kinda figured this one since I’ve gotten seriously sick 3 times when almonds/beer were eaten at the same meal). Plus I’m going to take out dairy & eggs for 3 months and then see what happens when I eat them again. I’m very thankful that meat, seafood, veggies, fruit, nuts/grains/legumes are okay but I’ll miss the baked goods that are staring at me every day 
It doesn’t take much!
As a replacement for milk in my morning routine I decided to make my own coconut milk since most of the canned versions have additives and bpa in the cans. It’s a very simple process to make the milk and the leftover pulp can be used in a variety of ways!
{How To} Coconut Milk
(adapted from Cheeseslave)
Unsweetened, organic coconut flakes
Filtered water
Place equal parts coconut and water in a pan (5 cups was a good amount for me to deal with). Bring to a boil and remove from heat to cool. Blend the mixture in a blinder or use an immersion blender. Strain the milk away from the pulp (I placed a damp cloth in a strainer, added the coconut pulp, wrapped it tight and squeezed out the milk). This yielded a quart of coconut milk.
A cloth made it easy to separate.
Since I was using this coconut milk for breakfast I added another 5 cups of water to the used pulp and made another batch before making “cookies”. If you are going to use the coconut milk in a recipe let it sit in the fridge for a day or two and then take the coconut milk off the top for the recipe and drink the coconut water on the bottom.
The coconut milk has a great flavor and in my opinion is WAY better then the canned item which to me always has a tinny taste from the cans. I kept one quart of milk in the fridge to use for the week and froze the second quart for next week. There was a great comment on the Cheeseslave post, linked above, from Mari on how to use the pulp to make “cookies.” I tried both of her ideas and they make a great little treat that is dairy & egg free!
Yum!
{Recipe} Coconut “Cookies”
(adapted from Mari’s comment)
For Coconut Macaroons:
2 cups coconut pulp
10 dates, pitted
1 cup water
1 tsp vanilla powder or extract
Place all the ingredients into a food processor and pulse until well blended. You can bake these in a low oven or dry them in a dehydrator overnight. I scooped small balls of the mixture onto a silpat, flattened them into disks and dried them at 135* overnight. They were still moist and I stored them in the fridge. They would be delicious half covered in chocolate!
For Coconut Ginger Snaps:
2 cups coconut pulp
6 dates, pitted
1 cup water
3/4 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cloves
Place all the ingredients into a food processor and pulse until well blended. You can bake these in a low oven or dry them in a dehydrator overnight. I scooped small balls of the mixture onto a silpat, flattened them into disks and dried them at 135* overnight. They were still moist and I stored them in the fridge. They would be delicious with a slice of candied ginger on top!
I’m excited to play around with the pulp coming up with fun little treats for myself over the next 3 months.
If you don’t want to make “cookies” you can dry and grind the pulp into coconut flour for baking, add it to oatmeal or granola, use it as a crust on seafood, sprinkle on top of curry or any other recipe where coconut is delicious.
This was really interesting. I would have liked to see what the milk looked like when done though. I may just try this if I can find some good coconut.
If you click on the middle picture you can see a larger pic of the milk… it is very similar to the canned coconut milk and once it separates in the fridge the top is a very thick cream.