Wish you a nice weekend ❤️😁

Like this time, I often like to use frozen coconut water to make my smoothie sweet. How about you? Do you have a special ingredient that allows you to skip sugar when making your favorite smoothies?

At home, we eat fruit every morning, but we seldom make juice or shakes, and when we do, we feel it's a special treat.

You won't see us drinking guava juice or papaya juice like you'll see most of our friends and family. At home, we eat the fruit.

Now, one drink I make all the time is coconut milk. I use it mostly for latte; sometimes it's yum-yum porridge with cinnamon, among others. This time it was a cold drink: Coconut & Strawberry Smoothie. I made it with ingredients that had been occupying valuable space in my freezer since last year 🙈: frozen coconut water and strawberries I stored ready to use.

It was about time. Remember Glenn Frey's hit that was the soundtrack for *Beverly Hills Cop? Well, the hit is on literally and metaphorically in my city. Fresh smoothies are ideal to quench your thirst these days and cool your body. Coconut water happens to help a lot with this.

SOME BENEFITS

As one of the most popular and versatile superfoods, used in sweet and savory dishes, and also as a remedy for digestive conditions caused by parasites and unwanted bacteria, coconut will also help relieve inflammation throughout your body. Fortunately, many of us love coconut. As for strawberry, it also helps us with our digestion and to reduce inflammation; besides, it also helps us control our blood sugar.

This drink has a lot of coconut flavor and a strawberry twist, fresh shredded coconut on top and, why not, a little ground cinnamon sprinkled on top to make things more interesting.

INGREDIENTS

• 700 ml frozen coconut water (from last year 😂)
• 200 ml homemade coconut milk
• 100 gr frozen strawberries

• 2-3 spoonfuls fresh shredded coconut & ground cinnamon for garnish

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SMOOTHIE-ING 😋

I started by making coconut milk. I made a lot today but only used 200 ml for the smoothies. As usual, I burned the coconut directly on the stove, rotating them with my kitchen tongs, until the cracked; this helped me remove the flesh from the endocarp more easily.

I opened the soft pore to take out the water.

I finished opening de coconut and removed the flesh from the endocarp.

I washed the coconut meat...

and cut into pieces about 1 cm thick so my blender wouldn't work too hard.

The coconut meat went into the blender glass along with the water.

The blender did the job.

Then I poured the coconut mix into my yogurt dripping bag...

...and squeezed to get the milk.

At this point, I could start blending the smoothies, one for me and one for my husband. I broke the coconut water ice, which is actually easy to break, and put all of it in the blender plus all of the coconut milk.

Once the mixture was thick and creamy,

I filled each glass halfway.

I quickly proceeded to blend the coconut milk that was left in the blender glass with the frozen strawberries...

...and finished filling the glasses. This way I'd have two different colored layers, white and pink.

I added an additional layer of coconut milk to my smoothie and that's when I thought that a little shredded coconut on top would be nice, after all, toppings are customary when making smoothies.

I took some pictures before the smoothies began to melt down. And then, after trying the mix of flavors, I thought that a little cinnamon would provide that twist I was looking for. I wasn't wrong 😋❤️

CHEERS!

All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY for all them.

Thank you so much for your visit :)

Banner by @andresromero 🖤