Here's everything worth knowing about cream of coconut and how to pick it, what it is, how to store it, and what to use instead, plus 25 recipes to cook tonight.

What is cream of coconut?

Cream of coconut is a thick, sweetened coconut product sold in cans and squeeze bottles, best known as the white-magic ingredient in a pina colada. Coco Lopez is the classic brand. You will usually find it in the cocktail-mixer aisle, not next to the canned coconut milk.

It is essentially pressed coconut cream blended with a heavy dose of sugar. It pours like a thick syrup and tastes candy-sweet on its own. That sweetness is the whole point, because it lets you flavor and sweeten a drink or dessert in one pour.

One thing to know before you open a can: it almost always separates, with a firm white cap of coconut fat over a thinner syrup underneath. Stir or shake it back together before you measure.

Don't Confuse It With Coconut Milk

This is the mistake that ruins recipes. Cream of coconut is not the same thing as coconut cream or coconut milk, and the three are not interchangeable.

Coconut milk and unsweetened coconut cream are savory products with no added sugar. Cream of coconut is heavily sweetened.

Reach for a can of coconut milk when a pina colada or a coconut cake wanted cream of coconut, and the result comes out thin and barely sweet. Go the other way into a curry and the dish turns dessert-sweet.

The label overlap is genuinely confusing. Read for the word "sweetened" and the cocktail-mixer branding. When in doubt, taste a spoonful: cream of coconut tastes like frosting.

How to Use It

Blended frozen drinks are its home turf. A Pina Colada is the template: cream of coconut and pineapple juice go in the blender with rum and a scoop of ice, and the body and the sweetness both come from the one ingredient.

Frosty Pina Coladas works the same way. The Pina Colada Flip (Non-Alcoholic) swaps the rum for more juice without losing the creamy texture.

In baking it does double duty as sweetener and coconut flavor. Stir it into cheesecake batter for an Ambrosia Cheesecake, or soak a poke cake with it the way a Coconut-Chocolate Poke Cake does.

Because it carries its own sugar, recipes built around it usually dial back the granulated sugar elsewhere.

It also turns up in savory cooking now and then. The coconut-rich Adaptable Restaurant Curry is one example, though there most cooks reach for plain coconut milk.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Coconut loves bright, acidic partners. Pineapple is the natural match, which is why the pina colada family runs so deep. Lime, mango, and passion fruit also cut the richness, while dark chocolate and toasted nuts round it out on the dessert side.

The most common mistake is not stirring the separated can. You scoop out a glob of solid fat and a watery puddle, and the texture goes wrong.

The second is treating it like coconut milk and ending up with something far too sweet. The third is over-sweetening: because cream of coconut already carries plenty of sugar, taste before you add any more.

Substitutes

There is no clean one-to-one swap, because most coconut products are unsweetened. The closest fix is to make your own. Whisk together about 1 cup of unsweetened coconut cream with ¼ to ⅓ cup of sugar or simple syrup until it dissolves, then use it measure for measure.

In a pinch, full-fat coconut milk plus added sugar gets you in the neighborhood for a drink, though the body will be thinner.

For baking, sweetened condensed milk brings the right sweetness and thickness but loses the coconut flavor, so add a splash of coconut extract to compensate. None of these match the exact pour of the real thing, so adjust sugar to taste.

Buying and Storage

Look in the cocktail-mixer or international aisle, not with the Thai coconut milk. Cans and plastic squeeze bottles both keep for a long time unopened, so check the date and store them in the pantry.

Always shake or warm the can before opening, because the fat firms up and separates in storage. A few seconds of warm tap water around the can, or a quick whisk, brings it back to a smooth pourable cream.

Once opened, scrape it into an airtight container and refrigerate, where it keeps for about two to three weeks. It firms up cold, so let it warm up before measuring again. You can also freeze leftovers in an ice cube tray for single drinks later.

Quick facts

In Chinese

椰子奶油

British (UK) term

Cream of coconut

en français

crème de coco

en español

crema de coco

Recipes using cream of coconut

There are 25 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 25 recipes