Soy Coconut Milk

A home made soy milk with coconut milk/cream added for flavour and consistency. Mixes well with coffee.

There are plenty of recipes online for home made soy milk - there's even a special machine that helps you make it. Here are the points of difference in this recipe:

• the addition of coconut cream/milk
• both the solids and liquid are cooked together and then the liquid is strained out, so that both are cooked and ready for use
• a colander and strainer are used to separate the solids from the liquid, rather than a cheesecloth

The emphasis is on streamlining the process so that it can be made with minimum hassle and time, while making a product of acceptable quality.

I use organic yellow soy beans and this coconut cream from ALDI supermarket (this is in Australia). It costs about AUD$2.50 to make 3 Litres and it doesn't create so much packaging waste (i.e. Tetra Paks).

Soak 1 cup of yellow soy beans for 12-24 hours.

Optionally, after soaking the soy beans, get them to sprout by rinsing them in clean water once or twice per day and tipping that water out, leaving them moist but not saturated in the jar. They should sprout after 2-3 days. Sprouting helps to remove anti-nutrients, as does cooking the beans.

Put the soaked/sprouted soy beans in a blender or food processor with about a cup or so of water and blend for a minute until smooth.

Transfer from the blender to a large pot. Swish some water in the blender to collect the remaining part and then pour that into the pot too. Keep the waste to a minimum!

On a LOW heat, gently bring to the boil and stir occasionally and make sure it doesn't boil over. Turn your back for a second and it will boil over and make a mess - keep an eye on it!

After boiling, strain the mix through a colander into another large pot or bowl. Let it drip for 15 minutes or so then lift the colander on its side to strain out the last bit of liquid.

Now strain that through a sieve to capture the smaller solids. You can try to reuse the large pot, but in any case you'll have a good amount of washing up to do! Don't delay on the washing - the soy sticks hard when it dries out.

Some advise to strain through a cheesecloth. This seems messy and wasteful to me, but if you need your soy milk totally free of sediment then that's what you'll need to do. I just enjoy the little snack at the bottom of my coffee.

Add the coconut cream/milk to the soy milk and gently heat and stir until the coconut cream breaks down and blends.

After the soy coconut milk has cooled in the pot, pour it into bottles using a funnel. Fill 3 1L-size bottles evenly and then top them up with water. Alternatively, fill 2 bottles for a thicker creamier taste.

Store them in the fridge and use within a week. Give it a good shake each time you're about to use it to get a good consistency. This also adds a little froth on your coffee. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Put the soy solids from the colander and sieve into a container. Be aware that this stuff is digestive dynamite and therefore should NOT be made into anything delicious that you'll want to (and will) eat all at once. I mix a bit of spirulina, cacao and carob powder into mine and mix a bit of it with oats and fruit for breakfast. 2 full tablespoons is a good amount each day.