Coconut oil flop!

I follow a number of blogs & one of my favourites is Chocolate Covered Katie. I am neither a vegan nor a health nut, but oh boy, do her recipes look so tempting! Today’s post was no different…chocolate monkey peanut butter bites! She had me at “chocolate”!

But, in its original form, it requires coconut oil. Using it instead of melted choc makes each little morsel only 60cal! Having established right away that, having never bought the stuff before, I wouldn’t have any stashed in the back of the pantry I went to plan B…make my own! I know I know, this has disaster written all over it. But I’m nothing if not overly optimistic when presented with a challenge! So after a quick youtube video tutorial I was set to go…

Ok, so I didn’t have an actual coconut but you have to fuss around with the damn thing until you get the milk anyways so I was sure a box of natural coconut milk would work. I boiled the heck out of of on higher than high temperature & stirred continuously, as instructed.

Now here’s when I hit my first “moment”…according to the how-to video, I would’ve started to see oil & then it would form a curd, which I would strain to get out the oil. Simple, right?I thought so…until about 20 min into the boiling of said milk. I could see NOTHING through all the steam!!!

Then the curd looked more like yogurt, despite me leaving it until about 2 seconds from burning!

And then to try get any oil out….

Can you see the oil in the bottom?No?Yeah, that’s what I thought, it produced about 5mm of not-so-clear oil!

I was less than amused so I broke out the chocolate chips & melted those down instead!Much more satisfying I can tell you, although the 60cal is probably quadrupled!

Presentation has never been my strong point but it didn’t help I over filled them. After tasting one, two, three of these lip-smackingly good bites I can say they are definitely tastier than they look & next time I may even splurge & BUY coconut oil so they are at least healthier!

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