There are some ingredients that I seem to have a lot of difficulty finding at the grocery store when I need them. One of these is cream of coconut, aka coconut cream. In America, this ingredient is not stocked with baking ingredients, but with liquor and cocktail ingredients. In the UK, I can't really begin to tell you where it is located.
Because I have so much trouble with this ingredient, whenever I see it while I'm roaming the aisles, I will usually just throw it into the grocery cart. It never goes bad and I save myself the problem of having to relocate it at a later date. The problem with this strategy is that I often do not take inventory of my pantry. Imagine my surprise when, two weekends ago, I discovered that I had been hoarding SIX cans of coconut cream. 4 were from the commissary and 2 were from Waitrose. Shame on me!
Now, another problem is that apart from the occasional coconut cake, I don't use coconut cream very often (hence my difficulty in locating it at the store). I did a little research today and realized, to my delight, that I could just use some imagination and basically substitute it for milk or coconut milk in a lot of recipes. Soon, ideas for coconut tapioca pudding, coconut bread pudding, and coconut rice came to my head. And since I had been craving pancakes for a couple of days, I decided that we all needed to have coconut pancakes for afternoon tea. As Jamie Oliver would say, the cream coconut "worked a treat" and I was pleased with the results. These pancakes have the same texture as regular pancakes (and no crunchy little coconut bits, which some people really abhor).
Coconut Pancakes
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 Tablespoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 cup buttermilk (or regular milk with some lemon juice squirted in and left to sit for a few minutes)
1 cup cream of coconut
vegetable oil/butter
1. Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. In another bowl, whisk together the egg, buttermilk and cream of coconut.
2. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and whisk to combine. Stop whisking once everything is combined.
3. Heat a pancake griddle or frying pan, add some oil or butter to prevent the cakes from sticking (be generous with this...these cakes seem stickier than regular ones). Cook the pancakes until bubbles appear all over the batter. Flip the pancakes and continue cooking them for a minute or two longer.
4. These are so sweet that I don't think they need any syrup, but if you want a real treat, warm up some maple syrup and sprinkle with chopped pecans or macadamia nuts.
These sound delicious!!
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