I Finally Cracked A Coconut
Yesterday I decided to make these fantastic-sounding cookies that I found at Kristen’s Raw. I had all the ingredients except coconut and lucuma (to be honest I’ve never even heard of this one, and since it’s not at our local grocery store, I made the cookies without it). So I went to the store to get coconut, but the only dried coconut they had was preserved with some multisyllabic ingredient designed to enhance the white color. No thanks. My gaze fell on the fresh coconuts, and I was reminded of my only experience with the little beasts, ten years ago in Tanzania. I was a new Peace Corps Volunteer, very unschooled in the ways of tropical fruits, and I bought a coconut at the market one day. In my efforts to crack it open (using a dull hatchet, one of the only tools I owned), I ended up putting some serious dents in my only frying pan, and some not-so-serious cracks in my concrete floor.
But now I have google. And since there was a good size stack of coconuts for sale, I figured that someone must know a good way to open them, and I knew I could probably find that someone via the internet. So I bought a coconut and brought it home. It took a while, but I ended up with fresh coconut to use in my cookies (and no cracks in my kitchen floor). They turned out amazingly good – the fresh coconut made them very moist, and all the flavors went together perfectly. I’m sure that the lucuma powder would make them even better, but I can attest to their wonderfulness without it, so don’t worry if you don’t have any (or if you’ve never heard of it!).
The best part was that these cookies took about five minutes to make (plus the time I took to research “opening a coconut” and then recreating the process in my kitchen). I’m curious how they would taste with other nuts substituted in place of the pecans. Any other ideas for variations on these little marvels?
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Made these yummy little raw cookies this week….so good! First batch was straight up, following the recipe. Turned out wonderfully. Second batch we subbed in some walnuts and almonds to go with the pecans, and added hempseeds, flaxseeds, flax meal, dried cranberries, and cacao nibs.
Oh my. They were terrific! I had to restrain myself from inhaling them all
FB, It’s really easy to crack open a coconut using a hammer.