Coconuts practical tips how to make your own coconut cream and much more

• Coconut milk
• Coconut cream
• Coconut whipped cream
• Sundowner rum-coco, ama-coco
• Coco-burgers and spread for bread
• Coco-meat
• ChocoCoco bounty dessert

This is how you easily make your own real coconut milk and (whipped) cream:

Step 1: gather and crack the coconuts

If you're lucky enough to be in paradise, of course you start with collecting coconuts. The mature ones (brown outer layer) are best for the coconut flesh because they have the most oil and taste and their water is the sweetest. The green ones have more water to drink, very refreshing but less mature taste than that of older ones. Locals are good with removing the outer husk of the coconut. We tried it and we suck at it haha so we don't bother to remove the outside of the coconut anymore.

Step 2: take out the coconut flesh

We use an axe and slam it with a hammer until the coconut cracks in two halves. Mind the direction of the fibres, you need to have the axe in the same direction otherwise it won't work! If you want to use the water, then first drill a hole and drain or drink it before you crack it (always smell first!!) ;-) If you have the nut in two halves, you need to take out the flesh. The coconut-flesh comes out pretty easy with a flat screw driver and a small hammer. Just tap between the two layers. It takes a bit of practice but it's not too difficult.

Step 3: cut the coconut into small pieces

If you have a blender with a small bowl, you're very lucky! If you don't, put it on your list of wannahaves because it's really handy for many things!! Put the pieces of coconut into the bowl and let it run for a while to cut it into very small pieces. Don't have a machine? Then you need to grind it by hand... and it will take a long time! In either case, don't bother to remove the brown part of the coconut, it will make your cream off-white but it doesn't affect the taste and it saves a lot of work if you leave it!

Step 4: pour hot water and blend

Put your small pieces of coconut in a pot and poor hot (boiling) water on top, just enough to cover them all. Take your blender and mix it for a while. The smaller the particles get, the better it gives away it's cream. Hot water makes it much easier to really extract the oily cream.

Step 5: filter it

Now you need to filter it. Traditionally they use a piece of fabric for this job but I discovered that a panty hose works like a charm and saves a lot of work! Just put a panty (now you know why you took them!) on top of your pot and turn it around above a collecting pot. Most comes out instantly, without any efforts and precisely there where you want it to be. :-D Then start milking it, just squeeze out the moisture. Beware, it might still be hot! The harder you squeeze, the more liquid comes out but also the less tasty your sprinkles become (yes, you get free coconut sprinkles!). So squeeze as little or much as you prefer.

Step 6: enjoy the coconut milk or cool down to make cream

Your coconut milk and sprinkles are ready! You can use the milk as is, or you can turn it into coconut-cream. How? Just cool it down. By cooling down, the heavier liquid will sink to the bottom and the oily cream will float on top. Leave it in the refrigerator to separate for about 24 hours or so (freezer is faster).

Step 7: check the result of the cooled coconutmilk

After your coconut milk has been cooled down, you will see a watery layer on the floor and a creamy layer on top. If your recipe requires you use the cream, just scoop off the top. If you didn't mean to make cream but only put the coconut milk in the fridge to store it, then simply shake well and you have a nice milk again.

Step 8: cream or whipped cream

This is the creamy top scooped off the watery bottom after just a day in the fridge. The top became a really thick creamy coconut layer that is so thick that it keeps its shape. Do you want to make coconut whipped cream? Whip the cream and you will approximately double the volume and turn the thick cream into a really yummy creamy whipped coconut. It's an awesome replacement for regular whipped cream and if you're lucky enough to live in paradise and collect your own coconuts, it's completely plastic, fossil fuel and animal cruelty-free! Add sugar to your tasting. You know what's yummy? Whipped coconut cream on your boat-made bread, as a thick layer, then hazelnut paste and perfected with coconut sprinkles on top... To die for!

Sundowner rum-coco, ama-coco or whatever you like

Originally, you need to remove the husk of the coconut and then put a straw through one of the three soft eyes that every coconut naturally has. But we lazy sailors prefer to drink more and work less so we found a much easier way to enjoy a coconut drink. During the day we don't poor in any liquor but just enjoy the pure coconut water. But during sundowner (did you realize that actually the sun goes down already after noon? ;-)), we like to spice it up with some rum or amaretto.

Step 1: drill a hole

Drill a hole through the whole coconut

Step 2: smell, taste, poor in the liquor

Be careful, some coconuts (especially the young green ones), can be very full. Don't forget to first smell, then taste and take a sip to create some space for the liquor that you like. Rum is a good one but my personal favourite? Amaretto, by far!!! The combo with the coconut is superb imo.

Step 3: ENJOY

My little sister enjoying her ama-coco drink with a stainless steel straw (of course you wouldn't use a plastic straw!!)

Coco-burgers and bread spread

Step 1: Put ingredients together

Put cooked chickpeas, raw onion, tomato paste, garlic, olive oil, salt, honey, spices and a little water in a jar and mix it with a blender. Cut coconut into small pieces (not as fine as the mix, keep it separate). If you have a smokey liquid, go ahead and add it, that really makes the taste to die for!

Step 2: Mix the chickpea paste with the coconutchips

If your chickpea-paste is ready, mix it with a spoon with the small pieces of coconut. The coconut makes your burgers more tender because of their oil content (so don't use sprinkles, use full coconut with the oil). The pieces of coconut also add a real nice bite to your burger, that's why you shouldn't blend too fine.

Step 3: Moist it more for bread spread or shortly bake for the burgers

The mixture should be reasonable firm for the burgers. If you like to use it as a healthy bread spread or for spread for toast, add some liquid to make it a bit thinner. Want to have a burger? Bake it shortly in hot oil. Since you used cooked chickpeas, it doesn't need the cooking, it's just a matter of warming them up and creating a nice crust. Don't bake them longer than necessary to keep them tender and moist.

Coco-meat-chips

Do you want to add some spice and bite to your dinner? A nice, super easy and very different way to use coconut is to cut it into thin slices (about 1-2mm thick), marinade it in teriyaki and spicy pepper and bake that in a frying pan. The chips spice up your food and add a nice bite to it.

ChocoCoco Bounty Dessert

What you need:

• Coconut flesh from a mature coconut
• Some milk powder mixed with a tiny bit of water OR thick coconut cream
• Tiny pinch of salt
• Nutella or something similar
• Food processor
• Small glasses

This is a super easy very fast but OH SO YUMMY (if you like bounties that is!) recipe for a coconut desert. It's so simple: take mature coconut flesh, put it in a food processor and blend till it's pretty fine like the structure of a bounty. Take a few teaspoons of milk powder* in a jar, add a tiny bit of water to it to make it a thick sticky paste. Add the coconut and a tiny pinch of salt (to your taste), mix. That's it, that's the bounty mix! If you put this in the fridge, it will get firm because of the coconut oil.

Now you have different options what to can do with it. I'm sure it will be possible to make real 'bounty-bars' with melted chocolate if you first put chunks of the bounty paste in the fridge/freezer and once cold, poor melted chocolate onto them. But I haven't tried that yet.

What I did was to take small glasses and to fill them with the bounty-mix, layered with hazelnut-chocolate paste (simply the one you usually put on bread :-)). The tastes go together very well and the brown&white layers look beautiful too. It makes very attractive looking little desserts, especially if the upper layer is the chocolate paste sprinkled with some beautiful full fat coconutsprinkles and a long coconut-'straw' that you put in there as a nice&edible decoration.

*Vegan alternative: no milkpowder but instead first make coconutcream, put it overnight in the fridge and use the thick cream instead of the milk powder. I haven't tried it yet but I'm pretty sure that would work and be delicious! It only takes quite some extra time if you first have to make the overnight coconutcream but it's a much more sustainable choice :-)

Blender

Coconut stuff can be hard for the blender. We now have a very powerful one, a 1200 Watt NutriBullet, and it is perfect for on the boat. It has rubber suction feed, so even in rough conditions, it stays upright.

Check it out!