i found this a bit different from the haupia my wife and i had at ono's hawaiian foods and helena's hawaiian foods. after tinkering with this recipe, i have a couple of suggestions. try skipping the nutmeg and vanilla altogether and using 3/4 cup sugar. the color will be a more beautiful pure white, and there's nothing else to distract you from the fresh coconut milk flavor.
I thought this was a great recipe. The first time I had haupia was at a Lu'au on the island of Maui. This recipe was very similar to that, however the nutmeg added gave the haupia sort of dirty color. (The taste of the nutmeg was great though). The haupia I've had before was a milky-white color, which to me was much more appealing. I think this recipe was actually very simple, however I choose to skip the part where you make your own coconut milk, and just added three cups of canned coco-milk instead. In Hawaii they sell powdered haupia, which you just add water and boil, and let it set up. This recipe had a much better taste than the mix did! Thanks for the recipe!
I used canned coconut milk and omitted the vanilla and nutmeg because I wanted my Haupia to be milky white. Very easy to make. As far as the taste goes I liked it.
I've never had hawaiian pudding before so I don't have a refernce point to compare this recipe to but I thought it was an awful lot of work for just a so-so outcome. I thought it was far too gelatinous in texture (it needs the crushed pineapple) & I probably could have achieved the same flavor w/out having to pry that coconut out of the shell.;o) I bought one w/out having any idea as to how to get it out of there. Googled & it seems like noone else has any helpful tips either. LOL It's very tedious scraping the coconut out & I don't think I'll be doing it again.;o) On the plus side I got some really cool coconut halves to use as dishes.
So delicious, easy and simple! I made this 3 times. A very good point is to follow the advice of mixing a part of the coconut milk first until it is a smooth paste. Otherwise (I made this mistake once) it can be very difficult to dissolve the cornstarch and it will affect the texture.
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