rebeccmeister | Beverage Test: Powdered coconut cream

I've kind of been looking for something dairy-like that I can keep on hand in my office to add to occasional afternoon beverages. You might remember my previous efforts with cream cubes and dilemmas over cow's milk. Commercially-produced artificial creamers are right out. In the past I've tried powdered milk, but I just don't care for the flavor when powdered milk is reconstituted. Also, it's usually nonfat and I want more of the fatty flavor. Things that need to be refrigerated also don't really work because they typically spoil before I use them all (i.e. carton of half-and-half; my work fridge doesn't have a freezer).

So! One of the curiosities I picked up from the Asian grocery on Saturday was a box of powdered coconut cream, a product I hadn't seen at our local grocery co-op. Interestingly, most types of powdered coconut cream also contain some amount of casein or milk powder, probably to help with the consistency of the powder. And then, this morning, I managed to forget to pack along milk for my morning post-rowing coffee. Time to put the stuff to the test!

Verdict: powdered coconut cream works! It wound up being slightly chunky but that's because of how I tried to mix it. It's no MALK* (lol) and if I made this a regular thing I'd probably want more protein, but for emergency purposes and for afternoon beverages, perfect. So yay, and now I don't need to blog endlessly about it anymore.

[I also bought a huge tin of Ovaltine from the African grocery store for afternoon beverages. It has the advantage of being less sweet than hot chocolate and of not containing palm oil products. I haven't had the cargo space to bring it in to work yet.]

*MALK = brand of almond 'milk' that caused me to read all about how the dairy industry is up in arms over labeling of non-dairy products as 'milk.' I have not tried MALK but I think the name is utterly hilarious.

annikusrex is correct (elsejournal) that other vowel alternatives don't work as well, except maybe MYLK but that's been claimed already. The dairy industry does have a point about misappropriation of the word 'milk,' given the recent proliferation of bean and nut beverages that pale in comparison to dairy milk in terms of nutritional content.