Some of you lovely readers have been asking for more dairy free recipes and I've been on the lookout for some exciting dairy free ingredients to substitute the usual, dairy filled, ingredients in my baking. Enter stage left, coconut oil. While the nutritionists raved about the health benefits, I was excited about the buttery texture of it. You can spread this on crackers, use it for cooking, add it to smoothies and even cream it with sugar to make a cake. Leave your jar in the fridge and it'll be like hard butter, leave it in the warm kitchen and it'll be runny and you can pour it into your roasting tin. It is extremely resistant to heat, so it won't burn like olive oil and it has a very subtle coconutty flavour that won't overpower the rest of your ingredients.
It's pricey, around £10 for 500ml, so I'll probably go bankrupt using it in everything. Fortunately, Lucy Bee Coconut Oil is 20% off over at Natural Health so it's only £7.96 for 500ml at the moment. I'll be stocking up!
ALSO fantastic as a beauty product, I use as a face cream when my skins feeling dry and also as an intensive conditioner!! It's amazing stuff.
ReplyDeleteIt really is brilliant!
DeleteQuick tip for the broke: if you have an international supermarket/ grocers nearby you can pick up a big jar for around £2 (also in the world food aisle in some big supermarkets)!
ReplyDeleteThat's a great tip, thanks!
DeleteI use coconut oil in everything! I've even created hot buttered coconut rum. I won't put the link but feel free to check out my site for recipes! Re cheap coconut oil, it's worth knowing that those tend to be very processed so you're losing much of the health benefits and are better to use for hair etc. For eating, look for labels with virgin/extra virgin/unrefined which does cost more. Ignore "pure" as it is just a marketing term with no legal meaning. If you want the benefits without the coconut flavour then look out for coconut butter.
ReplyDeleteThey sell coconut oil in my local big Tesco at around £1.50 for a big jar. Also try any ethnicy food shops. Almond oil is also very cheap if you buy it in food places and very expensive it you buy it in beauty places - very good as make up remover and many other things.
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