I was so excited to come home my birthday night to a bag of produce on my porch. A good friend of mine left me produce for my birthday. How creative and thoughtful is that! I'm going to log that in for future birthday gifts because I for one thought it was amazing. One of the gifts was a coconut. Keep in mind her card read that I make food pretty and that she wanted me to make the things she put in my bag pretty. I do like a challenge.
It's been pretty hot around these parts lately so naturally the first thing that popped into my head was popsicles. Coconuts are a lot of work. I had to knock a hole in it first to get out the water. Then crack that sucker open to get to the meat. Super hard work. Not to be ungrateful or anything but for future I really, really appreciate the coconut chunks I've been buying in the frozen food section at Trader Joes. I will pay a little extra for the work to be done for me...just saying. However for the sake of the challenge and since I had a real coconut to work with, I put in the work and I think it was worth it.
I ran to Daiso the Japanese dollar fifty store down the street from my house and when I say ran, I really mean drove. I needed popsicle molds and of course they had them for a dollar fifty. I wanted the popsicles to look a little better than average and bought wooden popsicle sticks to use rather than the colorful plastic handles that came with the mold. I now have 50 minus 8 popsicle sticks for future popsicle making. Those can be found in the arts and crafts section of the store.
My first batch of 4 looked like this (below) Obviously I didn't mix it enough or something?? Because I put the rest of the mixture in the fridge and maybe being cold and going into the mixer a second time made it combine better. I'm just showing you the ugly ones (below) so you know I'm not Martha Stewart or someone like that....Rich likes to call me Pioneer Woman sometimes, that's a huge compliment. I think it's mainly the red hair though;) Oh and check out the grout! It drives me nuts. It's my reality another not so pretty real life photo. Someday, I'll have those concrete countertops I've always dreamed of.
INGREDIENTS:
One coconut (the juice/water from that)
Coconut shavings, I used a cheese grater
One can of organic coconut cream
One cup of berries I used half strawberries half raspberries
dash of vanilla
a table spoon of honey
They taste more tart than sweet and not very coconut-eeee surprisingly. I suppose if you want them more sweet, more honey might be good, or another healthy sweetener.