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Ingredients Archives: Full-Fat Coconut Milk

Dairy-Free Chocolate Fudge Frosting

By on June 17, 2019 in Guilt-Free Treats

We love to have people over for dessert, but I often feel guilty serving them something that fits into our family’s food sensitivities. It’s hard to make something that tastes like Grandma’s cooking when it has to be gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, and egg-free. Luckily, food is a big enough part of my life, we figure it out. I’m not okay living in a world that doesn’t allow me to have treats…regularly.

A few weeks ago, I wanted chocolate cupcakes with chocolaty, fudgy frosting.  I’d always loved ganache back in the day, so I wanted to make a replica of my favorite ganache frosting using ingredients that won’t wreck me.

This frosting did not disappoint! My kids referred to our cupcakes as “magic cupcakes.” Pretty much I felt like the most awesome mom ever.

I was confident enough in these to serve them to guests, and didn’t even have to lead with a disclaimer. We baked a basic paleo-style cupcake but like all cakes, the frosting made the dish. I consider all cake a vessel for frosting. I always double the frosting on my birthday cake because… it’s my birthday.

If you don’t want to make frosting out of this chocolate goodness, you can skip the whipping part and roll it into balls to make truffles. Or you can just call it pudding and eat it with a spoon. All of the above are a perfectly acceptable way to eat this mixture that may resemble chocolate unicorn tears.

We used Lily’s chocolate chips to keep it sugar-free. These chips are sweetened with stevia and erythritol, neither of which bother me in reasonable amounts (I know this because I’ve eating unreasonable amounts and the result “cleared the room” if you know what I’m saying…).

You can use a dark chocolate or your favorite semi-sweet chocolate as well. We love Enjoy Life Chocolate Chips and Nestlee Simply Delicious Chocolate Chips. Both are made with minimal ingredients and dairy-free.

If you’ve ever made ganache, you know how easy it is. Just add hot milk (coconut milk in this case) to chocolate…

Once it’s melted, whisk it together…

Let it set up in the fridge…

And whip it. Whip it good! (I’m so sorry. I had to. And do you see my finger mark in the frosting? No apologies here)…

So easy and yummy!! We actually had to add a bit more coconut milk as we were whipping to get our perfect texture. If you need to add more coconut milk, do it 1 Tbsp at a time until it seems perfect to you.

So if you’re planning a birthday party, a BBQ to have friends over for dinner or if you just want something that goes well with a spoon, you can make this frosting and be proud!

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Creamy Vegetable Curry Soup

By on November 2, 2018 in Main Dishes

Fall means pumpkin spice, sweaters, pretending leggings are actually pants and my favorite: SOUP! I love having soup for dinner. It’s warm and comforting, and so easy to make. It’s also a great way to get in some extra veggies.

This soup is on a whole new level of awesome. Roasting veggies is my favorite way to eat them. So roasting veggies and then turning them into a soup is pretty much the perfect combination. And adding curry is the perfect flavor. Even veggie haters will love this soup.

One thing that makes this recipe so easy is my Instant Pot. The Instant Pot is my favorite for soups. I love my slow cooker but something about pressure cooking soup makes it taste and feel like it’s been cooking for hours. I love it! And it only takes 5 minutes once it goes into the Instant Pot. You could even roast the veggies in advance and then add them to the Instant Pot when you get home in the evening. If you don’t have an Instant Pot, you can cook the soup in the slow cooker on low for 4-6 hours or boil it on the stove for about 20 minutes. The veggies are already fairly soft, but this makes them soft enough to puree and helps all the flavors blend together.

If you’re like me and eating dairy makes you feel completely awful, you may be missing out on creamy things. The solution: coconut milk. Any soup recipe that calls for heavy cream can be just as (if not more) delicious with coconut milk. It’s extra fitting in this soup as coconut and curry go well together; and not just because they both start with “c.”

You could easily add chicken or a ground meat to this soup to give it extra protein, but I love it plain. Now go put on some leggings and have some soup.


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Healthy, 5-Ingredient, Frozen Fudge Pops

By on February 23, 2018 in Guilt-Free Treats

Today I have an awesome recipe for you! We made the most creamy, rich, perfectly sweet frozen fudge pops last week. Before I get to that, here’s the story behind the need for such a delicious treat.

My poor, sweet 10-year-old son has braces. I’m super impressed with all the advancements society has made as far as convenience goes in the last 20 years, but I’m sad to report, braces are exactly the same. Metal death traps that steal childhood innocence.

My son has been so brave these last 7 months with his braces, but this last wire change was particularly rough. Two days after his appointment, he sat at the kitchen counter crying. “I just want an apple! Everything hurts! I’m tired of protein smoothies!” I felt so bad for this kid. I asked him if he wanted to make some fudge pops and nodded his tear-streaked face. Poor dude.

These were sooooooooooo easy to make. I thought about sneakng in some pureed veggies or collagen powder but I just wanted to give my son a pure treat. Luckily, I’m completely okay with all the ingredients in these. So okay with them, that I let both kids have one for breakfast the next morning.

I just threw all 5 ingredients into my blender and blended it until it was smooth. You could seriously just drink it that way. It was so delicious!

I got these cute molds on Zulily one morning when I was sprawled on the floor with my phone recovering from a HIIT workout. Since I only got 4, we used paper cups for the rest of the batter. The cups were about double the size of the molds (these molds are tiny), so without the molds this is enough to fill about 8 small paper cups. This will vary based on the size of your molds.

 

 

With the paper cups, I covered them with plastic wrap first, cut little holes in the wrap and stuck in the wooden sticks.

These took about 10 hours to freeze. It was longer than I would have liked, but TOTALLY worth it. The kids feel like they’re getting an awesome treat (and they are) and I don’t have the feel bad about all the junk in store-bought fudge pops. AND… the whole batch cost about $2.00 to make. That’s way cheaper than it would cost to get the all-natural fudge pops at the grocery store.

And I had two very satisfied kiddos. Eating fudge pops on a Friday off of school in pajamas. Childhood rocks!

 

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5 Ingredient Healthy Chocolate Peanut Butter Pudding

By on July 12, 2017 in Guilt-Free Treats

We do dessert every Sunday night because it just makes life better. A few weeks ago I made some grain-free, refined sugar-free, dairy-free cookies. They were DELICIOUS, but I wanted something more. I didn’t have much time so I decided to whip up some extremely easy, creamy, sweet chocolate peanut butter pudding. Dipping the cookies in the pudding was basically heaven!

It all starts with coconut cream. Coconut cream is the solid portion of canned coconut milk. Getting it is super simple. Just stick a can of full-fat coconut milk in the fridge for a few hours (I usually stick mine in the night before). I really like to use the Thai Kitchen brand. I prefer the taste and consistency to other coconut milks. Then using a spoon, gently scoop the solid cream into a bowl. You’ll be left with a clear liquid. Save this for smoothies or to thin out your pudding a bit.

Coconut cream is so stable, you can add it the honey, cocoa powder and vanilla all at the same time.

Whip this up with a hand mixer and then add in the peanut butter. I call it good there. But this pudding is extremely thick. So thick this could even double for a frosting. If you like a thinner pudding, just keep whipping in the liquid from the coconut milk until you’re satisfied.

I highly recommend this with a cookie… or three…


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