Coconut Whipped Cream from a Can of Coconut Milk

Coconut whipped cream tastes amazing!  I never would have guessed it, and I never would have tested it if my husband hadn’t have gone gluten and dairy free last year, but it’s delicious.  There are very few substitutes that I think have a similar taste and consistency to the real thing, but this one is great and definitely worth trying.  Even if you aren’t dairy free this is worth trying!

It is so incredibly simple!  All you need is a can of good quality coconut milk and a hand mixer. Put the can of coconut milk in the fridge for at least 5 hours (overnight would be better) to get it to solidify and then whip it up like you’d whip regular whipped cream.

Make sure you buy a can of full fat coconut milk.  And make sure to get one that doesn’t have any emulsifiers in it.  You need to make sure that it’s full fat so that the liquid separates from the solids.  I’ve read that the Thai Kitchen brand used to work, but they’ve changed their blend and now it doesn’t separate, so it no longer works for coconut whipped cream.

The Grace coconut milkin my photos worked perfectly if you can find it.  Native Forest coconut milk is another brand that works well.  As I said, put it in the refrigerator overnight.  It’s very important that it’s completely chilled, otherwise you will end up with a liquidy mess.

Turn the can upside down after you take it out of the refrigerator.  While the coconut milk is sitting in the fridge, the water will sink to the bottom and the fat will rise to the top and solidify.  So when you flip it upside down, it will be much easier to drain off the liquid that has separated to the top:

Open the can, and pour off all of the liquid.  Try to get as much liquid out as you can – you should be able to pour off about 1/2 cup to 1 cup of liquid.  You can save this liquid for cooking or put it in your smoothies like we did.  It made our smoothies extra delicious!

You can see the solidified coconut milk in the photo below.  There is still some more liquid in the can that I had to drain off after this photo was taken, but hopefully you get the idea:

Scoop out the hardened coconut milk into a bowl and mix it with a hand mixer until it has the same consistency as whipped cream.  It only takes a couple minutes.

It ends up having the exact same consistency as whipped cream!  It is made with coconut milk, so it definitely has a mild coconut flavour to it, but it wasn’t overpowering.  I was shocked at how similar it is to whipped cream.  I think it’s an amazing alternative!

Being dairy free is a challenge, especially when you are looking for a little bit of a treat.  So I feel that discovering coconut milk whipped cream has opened up a new world of possibilities for us.  It’s only my husband who is dairy free, but I’d still gladly eat this with our desserts!

Add some vanilla extract and some sweetener if you need to, but I think it’s delicious without it.  Use it on top of fresh berries, put it on top of your gluten free pancakes, top off your hot chocolate with it (okay, that one isn’t actually dairy free but would still be delicious!), or use it in your favourite whipped cream dessert.  Coconut whipped cream takes less than 5 minutes to prepare and has exactly the same texture as whipped cream.