Make your own coconut milk and flour

As you all know, I read “Wheat Belly” and I have been following the Paleo diet for a bit.  However, occasionally in cooking, I need a thickener for a soup or curry or just need some flour for my pumpkin pancakes.  There are a lot of alternatives to wheat flour.  Nut flours, coconut flours, etc.  Coconut flour is expensive.  Way more expensive than wheat flour.  For a 16 oz. bag of Bob’s Red Mill coconut flour, it costs $5.24 (or $0.33/oz.).  In contrast, a 48 oz. bag of Bob’s Red Mill organic whole wheat flour costs $3.14 ($0.06/oz.).   In addition, you can buy a whole gallon of milk for $4.00 (128 ounces) or a can of coconut milk for $2.99 (13.6 oz.), which equates to $0.03/oz. vs. $0.22/oz. So, what is a girl to do?  Make your own!

I bought a lot of shredded coconut at the store the either day.  It must have been on sale.  Googled how to make coconut milk and flour and decided to give it a go. It was super easy.  I used one cup of coconut and that produced the equivalent of about 2 cans of coconut milk and about 1 cup of coconut flour, all for about $1.00.  You can use the coconut milk for smoothies too and it is delicious.  I used it in a soup and it turned out great.

Homemade coconut flour and coconut milk

Ingredients

1 cup shredded coconut

4 cups water

Instructions

Put your shredded coconut and water in a blender and let it sit several hours.  I left mine overnight.

Blend your coconut and water.

Strain the mixture through a strainer or cheesecloth, whatever you have and collect the liquid into a cup or bowl.  That’s your coconut milk.  Refrigerate the milk if you are not going to use right now.

The leftover coconut will be used to make the flour.

Set the oven to 200°.  Make sure your leftover coconut has minimal water left it in.

Grease a baking sheet with coconut oil and spread the coconut over the sheet.  Bake until the coconut is completely dried out.

~ Savannah FitNut aka Morgan McNeal