Coconut Milk: Whip It Good!

Strawberries are my favorite fruit, hands down. My grandmother fed them to me as a child practically by the pound - I think they were her favorite too. I still love them to this day and I love that they remind me of her. They are my go-to for simple, tasty, healthy, quick desserts (as you may remember from this post) and they're a winner every time. And that is why you will see me using them often.

When I first joined Pinterest, I came across two recipe ideas that inspired me to create the one I'm about to share with you here. The first was the idea that you could whip coconut milk. How brilliant is that?! I never even thought of that, and that is what I love about Pinterest - people share their ideas. So I put a pin in that idea and decided to come back to it later. The second recipe was for these little strawberry & cream Santa Clauses. The cream was the beard and the pointy end of the strawberry was the hat and then they drew the face on with chocolate. How cute!

I decided to bring these two ideas together recently because I needed a dessert recipe that was sans sugar. That's right folks, I gave up sugary desserts for Lent. I am by no means a religious person, but the way I had become accustomed to eating sweets was getting out of control so me and my waistline decided we needed to do something drastic. I haven't missed the sugar all that much, but I am very excited that Easter is only a little over a week away at this point so that these 40 days of torture can finally be over! ;-)

I digress. Back to the recipe at hand. I chose to use the whipped coconut cream in the strawberry Santa Claus recipe just to try something different. And an added benefit of doing that for you vegans or those of you who are lactose intolerant: it's dairy free. The coconut cream recipe is also sugar-free, which, aside from it being waistline-friendly, is perfect for diabetics. My recipe uses honey, but I think you could also substitute agave nectar if you're a fan of that and have it around the house.

Because the recipe for the cream tastes so much like regular whipped cream when you're done, you can use it in so many other recipes! Strawberry shortcake, on ice cream sundaes, in trifles, as a pie topper. The possibilities are endless!

Oh, and for the record - we will not be making strawberry Santa Clauses, so no chocolate here. That would go against my no-sugar rule so we'll save that for Christmas time!

Technically there's no "cooking" in this recipe, but I'm gonna say it anyways: let's get cookin'!

Strawberries & Whipped Coconut Cream

Servings: 2-3
"Cooking" Time: about 30 minutes

Ingredients:
About a dozen strawberries
1 can coconut milk
3 teaspoons honey
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of salt

Prep work:

1. The night before, place the can of coconut milk in the fridge and leave it there until you're ready to use it. This step is imperative to the cream becoming whipped. I skipped this step the first time I made this and only had it in the fridge for a couple of hours and it didn't work at.all.

2. A half an hour before you're ready to make the whipped cream, place the bowl you're going to use in the fridge, along with the whisk attachment(s) to your mixer.

To begin the recipe, take the coconut milk, bowl, and whisk attachment(s) out of the fridge and remove the lid of the coconut milk can. Be careful not to move it around too much - the watery part will have settled on the bottom and we don't want to have too much of that mix into the more solidified part.

Using a spoon, remove the solidified cream from the top of the can and put it into your cold bowl. Leave the watery milk in the bottom of the can and discard (and by "discard" I mean recycle!).

Place your cold whisk attachment(s) onto your mixer and whisk the coconut cream for about a minute on medium speed. Add the honey, vanilla, and cinnamon and whisk again on medium for another minute until it's all combined. The mixture should be slightly stiff at this point.

Place the bowl with the mixture and the whisk attachment(s) back in the fridge for 10 minutes.

While the cream is chilling in the fridge, you can prepare your strawberries. Cut the tops (the leafy end) off by slicing in a straight line through the berry, directly under the leaves. Then, cut the pointy end off. Line the berries on your serving plate, sitting up on the fatter end and place their ends right next to them.

Remove the cream from the fridge, place the whisk attachment(s) back onto your mixer and whisk again for one minute.

Carefully spoon a dollop of the cream onto the tops of each strawberry and place the end, or cap, on top of the cream. Serve immediately.

Salute!