I love a good, hot, just-strong-enough cup of office coffee, but I don’t love the milk situation in the office kitchen. The only nondairy option that’s readily available in our communal fridge is soy milk, which feels so 1990s in a world of pea-protein and macadamia-nut and rice milk. I’ll use it in a pinch, but I swear a splash of soy milk actually waters down my coffee. I much prefer the taste and viscosity of oat milk — a little sweet, a little nutty, and a lot creamy — and though I’ve considered bringing a personal carton of Oatly to the office, the logistics seem tricky. (Specifically, I am fully convinced that my vulturous co-workers would polish it off before I could get to it.)
So when I saw someone — I think Emily Schuman, of Cupcakes and Cashmere — stirring a spoonful of powdered Laird Superfood Creamer into her coffee on her Instagram Stories a while back, likely while I was drinking my mug of sad, watered-down soy-milk coffee, I figured I had little to lose by trying it myself.
“Nondairy powdered creamer” is a phrase with its own baggage. The conventional versions, one canister of which lives in our office kitchen and probably in yours, too, are heavily processed, with ingredients like corn-syrup solids and “a milk derivative” (which really sounds like dairy to me). But this superfood coffee creamer is keto, Paleo, and vegan. It was created by big-deal, big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton, who’s gotten into functional, clean, whole-food nutrition as a way to help him surf better and maintain consistent energy throughout the day.
Now, I am not keto, Paleo, or vegan. And I definitely do not surf, so it’s not the health and fitness benefits that sold me. It was the nutrition label. There are only three ingredients, all of which I can actually pronounce and understand: coconut-milk powder, calcium from algae, and organic coconut oil. I know I like coconut milk and coconut oil, so unless the algae really tasted like the ocean, I figured I would probably like this too.
It doesn’t look appetizing when you first open the bag. The superfood creamer is a white powder that has the consistency of cornstarch, especially in the way it clumps together. But it tastes excellent whisked into a cup of coffee, making it just coconutty enough without veering into piña colada. What’s even more impressive is how truly creamy it becomes, even more so than my coffee with oat milk, thanks to the fats from the coconut milk and coconut oil. (If I’m at home, I’ll whizz my home-brewed coffee with the creamer in the blender for about 30 seconds to make a wonderfully frothy latte, another benefit of all the fats.) I’m not totally sure what benefit the algae is imparting. Maybe it’s helping with the viscosity, or maybe it’s just helping with digestion? Either way, I can’t taste it, so who cares!
And though I’m in it for flavor, not function, I do understand what Laird was going for in terms of sustained energy. I feel less jittery after a cup of coffee with Superfood Creamer than I do after a cup of plain, black coffee. Another unexpected bonus is that by the time I drain the last dregs of coffee from my mug, I feel full, and I’m less inclined to go for a second or third cup. Coffee with soy milk, or almond milk or even my preferred oat milk, never leaves me satiated in this way.
The other benefit of the powder, despite its clumps, is that it’s portable and easy to store. I can leave a bag of it on my desk and have nondairy cream in my office coffee without worrying that my co-workers will borrow it, like they’d inevitably “borrow” a carton of Oatly. I’ve even traveled with it, bringing a Mason jar–full on a road trip from New York to Maine. It was nice to know that no matter where I woke up or where I got coffee, even at a gas station, I had a nondairy alternative I could add to make my morning routine feel a little more complete. Soy milk could never.
I’ve only tried the unsweetened version because I don’t like sugar in my coffee. But if you’ve got a sweet tooth, the original formula also has coconut sugar in it.
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