Coconut-Mango Rice Pudding

When I saw this recipe for coconut rice pudding, I had to make it immediately. That night. After a long day of work. I've always liked rice pudding but only made it once before. I looked at the recipe and saw that with a few alterations, I had all the ingredients at home and wouldn't have to run to the grocery store. The recipe called for forbidden black rice, which in the picture, looked a little scary. I decided I could substitute good old jasmine rice. The recipe also called for kiwi, which I don't really like and didn't have in my refrigerator, so I left that out. This pudding was delicious warm and chilled in the refrigerator!

Here's the recipe:
(Slightly changed; original recipe from Whole Foods Market).

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups water
1 1/4 cups uncooked jasmine rice
1 14 oz. can regular or light coconut milk (I used light coconut milk from Trader Joe's)
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup chopped mango (I used frozen mango from Whole Foods and chopped it into smaller pieces)
Unsweetened shredded coconut

Put water and rice into a medium pot, cover with lid and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer until all of the water is absorbed, about 20 minutes. Uncover and stir in coconut milk and sugar. Bring pot back to a simmer and cook, uncovered, for 5-10 minutes more. Stir in chopped mango. Top with unsweetened shredded coconut.

Enjoy!

Nutella-Coconut Hot Chocolate

Happy World Nutella Day 2011 everyone! I can't remember the first time that I had nutella- it was a long time ago, maybe when I took French in middle school. Did you all know that Nutella is French? I remember my French teacher talking about nutella a lot back then. Anyway, today is a day to make something with Nutella in order to celebrate how awesome it is! I've baked with nutella before, but today I decided to keep it simple. I made hot chocolate using coconut milk and stirred in some nutella and then topped it off with toasted coconut. I love nutella and coconut together! It's been so rainy, icy and just plain dreary outside that it's the perfect kind of day to snuggle up on your couch with some nutella hot chocolate!

Here's the very simple, 3 ingredient recipe:

1 cup of coconut milk
1 heaping tablespoon of Nutella
1 tablespoon toasted coconut

Heat the coconut milk on the stove or in the microwave until hot. Stir in the nutella until melted and top with toasted coconut.

Enjoy! Head on over to World Nutella Day, created by Ms Adventures in Italy and Bleeding Espresso to see other recipes made using nutella!



Coconut Sugar Cookies

Boy, do I love coconut! When I saw this recipe on Piece of Cake back in December, I immediately saved the recipe to make. They just sounded so delicious! And, they are pretty easy to make. There are four different kinds of coconut flavor in this recipe- desiccated coconut, sweetened coconut, coconut extract and coconut milk. Since I halved the recipe as I usually do, the dough wasn't coming together enough (probably because I used half an egg and that's not really a scientific measurement...) so I added a few tablespoons of water and that worked.

My half recipe made 15 cookies.

Here's the recipe:
(Slightly adapted from Piece of Cake)

1 1/4 cups flour
2 tablespoons dessicated coconut
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 large egg, room temperature (I whisked an egg in a bowl and took out 2 tablespoons)
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon coconut extract

For the icing and decoration:

1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons coconut milk
1/2 cup shredded, sweetened coconut
1 tablespoon white sanding sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Whisk together the flour, dessicated coconut, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Whisk together the oil, egg, vanilla and coconut extracts in a small bowl.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the butter and sugars until fluffy and pale in color, about 2 minutes.

Beat the egg mixture into the butter and sugar mixture on medium speed until well-blended. Scrape down the bowl and reduce the mixer speed to low. Gradually stir in the flour mixture until all the dry ingredients are incorporated. The dough will be very soft.

Using a 1-tablespoon-sized scoop, portion the dough into balls onto a baking sheet. Pour 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar onto a plate. Dip the flat bottom of a glass into the sugar, and press onto each dough ball lightly to flatten each to about 1/4-inch thick, dipping the cup or glass again before pressing each cookie. Sprinkle some of the leftover sugar on top of the cookies before baking.

Bake the cookies until they are lightly golden and crisp at the edges, about 12 minutes. Let the cookies cool in the sheets for a minute before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

When the cookies have cooled, whisk together the confectioners' sugar, coconut milk and salt in a small bowl. Toss together the shredded coconut and sanding sugar on a plate. Spread each cookie evenly with icing and sprinkle generously with the sugared coconut. Let the icing dry for about an hour before serving. Store in an airtight container for up to 1 week (the cookies will soften a bit after the first day).

Enjoy!

BAKED Sunday Mornings: Almond Joy Tart

Wow, where have I been? I can't believe I haven't baked in so long- I baked so much for Christmas and there were so many leftover cookies that I was trying to eat instead of baking something new. I also ran out of butter but finally got to the supermarket yesterday. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Happy New Year 2011 too : ). I know that 2011 will be an awesome year and one of my goals is to bake and cook more and to continue to blog what happens in my kitchen!

I wasn't sure if I was going to find the time to bake this almond joy tart, but boy am I glad I made the time! I have always loved the almond joy candy bars. This tart tastes divine and really reminds me of the candy bar. Once again, I halved the recipe and since I didn't have any mini tart pans, I made a free-form tart on a cookie sheet. As usual, my presentation needs to be worked on, as you can see from the pictures, but I kind of like the rustic look. I think my chocolate glaze didn't cover as well because there was so much coconut cream filling on the tart. For this tart, I followed the recipe pretty closely. I used almonds for the tart crust and for on top of the tart that were already roasted and that were maple coconut glazed. I used Malibu coconut flavored rum for a little extra coconut flavor. I also used only milk chocolate because I didn't have any dark chocolate and milk chocolate is my favorite anyway. I used unsweetened shredded coconut that I found at Whole Foods and I'm really glad I used that (like the recipe called for) and not the easier to find sweetened shredded coconut because I think that would have made it too sweet and the unsweetened coconut really reminds me of what is in an almond joy candy bar.

I was surprised at how easy this tart was to make, since it included several steps. You do have to be prepared in advance to make this, because the tart dough and the white chocolate mixture require substantial chilling time. I made the tart dough and the white chocolate mixture yesterday and refrigerated them until this morning. The tart dough began to crumble a little when I was rolling it out, but I just gathered it together in a ball again, re-floured and rolled it out and it came out perfect.

My free-form tart, in the oven.

The white chocolate coconut cream

Milk chocolate glaze

The almonds I used for the tart dough

Delicious!

Be sure to head over to Baked Sunday Mornings for the recipe and to see what the other members thought of this recipe!