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Coconut butter, "naked" or infused with 9 flavors
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"Orangerageous Om Bar" (named, in part, after a yoga reference) is bright with lemon, orange and rosemary
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Chilled coconut butter in fun shapes
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Autumn carrot soup made with Exotic Orange Coconut Butter
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Sweet and savory cashew snack mix made with Naked Coconut Butter and chipotle-rubbed guava
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Coconut-milk ice cream with a healthy coating of Banana Blue Coconut Butter, plus banana "coins" dipped in a hardened shell of Roasty Toasty (vanilla) Coconut Butter
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My Coconut Kitchen's maven, Angie Carl
If the New York Times Sunday Food section hasn’t given coconut butter its close-up yet, it surely will soon. Coconut butter and coconut oil are basic recipe building blocks to a group of eaters that seem to hold more sway each day: the paleo people. This avid group of grain-abjuring carnivores will tell you all about the “good fats” in foods like avocado, macadamia nuts and coconut derivatives. They may begin to sound like the Diet Police, but they make some very good points.
Angie Carl is not just on the bandwagon; she claims that coconut butter is an important part of a diet that has helped her find her way back to health after a very untimely heart attack at age 29. Her year-old business, My Coconut Kitchen, sells coconut butter mixed with stevia-based flavorings, to make flavors like “Sweet Lemon Kiss,” “Cherry on Top,” and “Banana Blue.”
These butters, sold in jars, have a consistency like natural peanut butter (with some oil tending to separate out) and a, well, nutty flavor.
Carl begins by taking organic, raw, unsweetened coconut flakes and toasting them. Then she processes them into butter, and turns the butter into distinct flavors that the health-conscious home cook may then experiment with long into the millennium. Almost all of them may form the base for delish desserts. “Sweet Lemon Kiss,” “Cherry On Top,” “Exotic Orange,” and “Espress-Oh My Love” are all self-explanatory. “Roasty Toasty” is toasted coconut with vanilla, and practically tastes like a delicious cookie before you even use it to make cookies. “Banana Blue” has walnuts, dried blueberries, cinnamon, and banana and vanilla flavors. “Eat Your Oatmeal” has toasted pecans, gluten-free oats, raisins, brown sugar, cinnamon and vanilla. “Divinely Dark” is a chocolate coconut butter.
The food entrepreneur has a whole mess of recipes on her site that show off some of the dishes you can make with My Coconut Kitchen butters. Just about anything you can do with butter is worth trying with coconut butter. You can put the oatmeal-flavored one on oatmeal, the lemon one on sautéed spinach, the cherry one on vanilla ice cream, and so on. Carl makes a sweet and savory cashew snack mix with the naked butter and chipotle-rubbed guava (she uses the mix as a crust for chicken, too.) Her autumnal carrot soup is a very thick delight, with an orange, floral kick from the “Exotic Orange” coconut butter. Similarly, her “Orangerageous Om Bar” (Om is a yoga reference) has vivid, bright tastes from orange, lemon and rosemary flavors. The butters may lend themselves to breakfast dishes and baked goods most readily, but they work well in curries and other savory creations, too.
“The coconut has a cooling sensation that mitigates against the spiciness in some recipes, like Thai food,” said Carl.
Carl’s cottage industry is humming along, but, she said, there are a few misconceptions she’s continually battling:
“People think butter means it has dairy in it, which it doesn’t,” she said. “And other people think coconut butter means suntan lotion.”
You can buy My Coconut Kitchen butters at Freddie’s Market in Webster Groves, Green Earth Grocery in Edwardsville, Local Harvest Grocery, Local Lucy’s in Belleville, Lucky’s Market in Ellisville, O’Fallon Nutrition, Sumits Hot Yoga in Chesterfield, at various farmers’ markets, Contact info is below:
314-441-6840
