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The Shopping List
1 Mature (brown) Coconut
Powdered Sugar / Confectioner’s Sugar
Ghee (clarified butter). Use normal unsalted butter if you don’t have ghee.
Cardamom
Almonds (optional)
Pistachios (unsalted) (optional)
The Recipe
Buy 1 Mature (Brown) coconut – see picture for guidance. Don’t buy coconut paste, or frozen grated coconut, or coconut pieces – buy a normal mature brown coconut. You should be able to find coconuts in Indian / Sri Lankan / Thai / Filipino grocery stores
Crack it open. How? There are various ways – use the method you feel most comfortable with. My ‘technique’ involves a kitchen towel and a hammer! For those with less-than-perfect hand-eye coordination, this is a good time to know where the nearest emergency center is. Stand over the kitchen sink. Have an empty cup/bowl handy (to collect the coconut water). Hold the coconut in one hand – use the kitchen towel for cushioning. Crack open the coconut with the hammer. Exercise extreme caution.
Collect the coconut water in the empty cup/bowl. Once the coconut water has been claimed, smash the coconut into several pieces to get access to the meat. Get rid of the shell
Cut the meat into smaller manageable pieces and grind it.
Grind about 4 pods of cardamom and a few almonds.
By volume, mix equal parts coconut and (normal) sugar. Add the ground cardamom and almonds.
Heat a frying pan and cook the coconut-sugar-cardamom-almond mix on medium-high heat for about 20 minutes till the mixture has the consistency of ice-cream and starts to un-stick from the pan.
Apply ghee(clarified butter) to a flat, shallow baking tray so that the coconut mix does not stick to the tray. Don’t sweat if you don’t have ghee – use melted unsalted butter instead.
Quickly spread the hot cooked coconut-sugar mix into the baking tray while it’s still malleable.
You can get fancy at this point and garnish the sweets with pistachios and/or almonds. I dint care enough.
While its still warm, score it with a knife (mark lines to cut along later).
Sprinkle some powdered sugar / confectioner’s sugar.
Let it cool and set for 30 minutes.
Sweet, divine coconut sweets are ready to be devoured.
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