{"id":1736,"date":"2011-09-01T11:33:17","date_gmt":"2011-09-01T16:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?p=1736"},"modified":"2011-09-01T12:26:07","modified_gmt":"2011-09-01T17:26:07","slug":"rethinking-the-coconut-pina-colada-ice-cream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?p=1736","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking the Coconut: Pina Colada Ice Cream"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none\"><iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fthesoupblog.com%2F%3Fp%3D1736&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show_faces=true&amp;action=like&amp;font=arial&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;width=450&amp;height=30\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowTransparency=\"true\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width: 450px; height: 30px;\"><\/iframe><\/div><div id=\"attachment_1738\" style=\"width: 447px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/?attachment_id=1738\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1738\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1738\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1738 \" title=\"Coconut Thoughts\" src=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Coconut-Thoughts.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"437\" height=\"352\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Coconut-Thoughts.jpg 485w, https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Coconut-Thoughts-100x80.jpg 100w, https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/Coconut-Thoughts-300x241.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 437px) 100vw, 437px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1738\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">When Cows Think of Retirement<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Coconut is not really a children\u2019s flavor. It was definitely my least favorite flavor growing and I wasn\u2019t alone in feeling this way.<\/p>\n<p>Whenever a parent brought a box of donuts to a childrens event, a morning baseball game or a pre-dawn field trip to the tide pools, the last one left in the box was always the coconut. It made perfect sense to me.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, someone would eventually eat the donut anyway because, well, it was a donut. And we were all quite used to scraping stuff off our food\u2014the black part of a burnt piece of toast, the bruised part of a banana, and the coconut on anything.<\/p>\n<p>What I didn\u2019t understand was those \u201cSometimes You Feel Like a Nut\u201d commercials for PeterPaul candy bars. The concept was all about choosing the chocolate bar that had almonds (Almond Joy) versus the one that didn\u2019t have almonds (Mounds). Hence the \u201csometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don\u2019t\u201d jingle. The problem was that both of them had dense coconut filling which made them pretty much unpalatable either way. The presence of almonds was completely beside the point.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, I know. There was always the one kid who actually liked coconut, but those were Children In Name Only (or Chinos) and are probably in a therpist\u2019s office right now bemoaning their lost childhoods.<\/p>\n<p>Just kidding.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, it turns out those Chinos were right about coconut and the rest of us were wrong. It\u2019s great. So good, in fact, that in the non-dairy frozen dessert world, it makes a terrific substitute for ice cream. Because coconuts come from the tropics, they\u2019re rich in saturated fats just like cream which makes them smooth, delicious and, well, creamy.<\/p>\n<p>If you haven\u2019t tried coconut-based \u201cice cream,\u201d I heartily recommend it. I also vow to bring you recipes for it here before too long.<\/p>\n<p>For now all I\u2019ve got is Pina Colada ice cream, which is not going to satisfy my friends who can\u2019t put up with lactose, but it\u2019s pretty darned good and, while not completely non-dairy, it is dramatically lower dairy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>NOTE: <\/strong>If you\u2019re like me, you may have thought the pina in pina colada stood for the pineapple while the colada represented the coconut. It turns out that colada means strained. So this drink is called strained pineapple with no credit whatsoever for the coconut. Not on my watch!<\/p>\n<p>The key to this dessert, the golden pathway to cream-free ice cream is coconut milk. But that will have to come later. This time around I just substituted light coconut milk it for the whole milk in \u201cGrandma\u2019s Old-Fashioned\u201d custard recipe and used cream for the remainder of the ice cream base. This created an inherent coconut flavor in the ice cream which I then balanced out with fresh pineapple which turned the whole thing into pina colada.<\/p>\n<p>The family liked this flavor well enough but they were not blown away by it. This could be because my kids are, well, kids, which means they don\u2019t like coconut.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe I should have thought of that beforehand.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pina Colada Ice Cream<br \/>\n<\/strong>(about 2 quarts)<br \/>\n1 \u00bd cups coconut milk<br \/>\n\u00be cup sugar<br \/>\n2 T flour<br \/>\nA few grains salt<br \/>\n2 eggs or 3 yolks (pasteurized, if possible, see note)<br \/>\n1 \u00bd cup cream<br \/>\n1 \u00bd cups fresh pineapple<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Heat coconut milk to 180-190\u00baF with sugar, flour and salt, stirring until thick, cover for 10 minutes.<\/li>\n<li>Beat eggs and add \u00bd cup of mixture while beating, then add eggs to mixture.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong>HEALTH NOTE:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>Since you\u2019re dealing with eggs here, you need to take care when cooking the custard. Too much cooking and the custard gets lumpy, too little and you risk salmonella.\u00a0 Another alternative is to use pasteurized eggs.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Heat the mixture for one minute over medium, then cool with plastic wrap or wax paper pressed onto the top of the mixture to keep it from developing a skin. Cool for several hours or overnight.<\/li>\n<li>Add the cream and the fresh pineapple to the cooled custard mix. Puree and freeze.<\/li>\n<li>Put the frozen ice cream in the freezer for a couple of hours to give it the chance to firm up.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><strong><br \/>\nNOTE: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>When freezing ice cream, you need to use an ice cream freezer to ensure that a certain amount of air is mixed into the frozen cream. This gives it a lighter, less icy consistency. When freezing sorbet, you may also freeze it in a popsicle mold, a bowl or on a sheet pan. Be sure to stir the mixture occasionally to limit the size of the ice particles. Larger chunks of ice make for granita, miniscule chunks make for a nice smooth sorbet (an ice cream freezer is ideal).<\/p>\n<p><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><em>Photo Credit: <\/em>\u201cRethinking the Coconut,\u201d from the lovely people of MS Clipart and the artist&#8217;s imagination<em>.<\/em><em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Now I just need to find some coconut cream, not half &amp; half, not whole, not skim coconut milk. Something high fat and buttery smooth.\u00a0 Does it exist? I\u2019ll let you know. Or you let me know, you know, the comments section.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coconut is not really a children\u2019s flavor. It was definitely my least favorite flavor growing and I wasn\u2019t alone in feeling this way. Whenever a parent brought a box of donuts to a childrens event, a morning baseball game or a pre-dawn field trip to the tide pools, the last one left in the box [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,48,35,134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coconut","category-dairy","category-fruit","category-ice-cream"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1736"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1749,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions\/1749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesoupblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}