This one's for all y'all vegans out there! I was veg for 14 years and vegan for 6 of those, so I like to share delicious treats with you when I find them. Vegan desserts can be a challenge to find sometimes! This one is gluten free even!
We have so much coconut here. They just rot on the ground. So, I am always on the lookout for yummy coconut snacks. My kids are weird about coconut. One likes the meat but not the milk or the water. One likes the milk but not the water or the meat, but everyone actually really liked these Kashata. That's cause they're delicious. They're also crazy simple. I found the recipe in my favorite cookbook. Yes, I still have cookbooks. It's called The World of Street Food. It's a marvelous compilation of street food dishes from all around the world. Kashata is Swahili in origin.
This is a coconut after being husked. This is how you find them in the store. I'm not going to show the process of husking. If you live in a place with coconuts, it's totally worthwhile to know how to do it, though. You can find lots of videos on it. You can see I have already cracked this coconut. You can see the three eyes on the top. One looks a little different than the other two. Tap a hole in that one with a nail or screwdriver and a hammer. It should be really easy because that hole is softer. Then you'll need to tap a small air hole in one of the other two eyes. Now you can dump the coconut water out. Drink it! It's good for you! Then you can crack it by tapping with a hammer around the circumference. You don't have to hit it hard.
Now, check out this medieval torture device! This thing makes grating a coconut a breeze. You can find them in pretty much any store here, but in the US and Europe, you probably have to order one online.
So, you put half the coconut on like this, hold it firm, and turn the handle. Within a couple minutes, you have a bowl of grated coconut. This recipe calls for 3/4 cup, which is about half a coconut, but I'd double it because we definitely wanted more. I put the grated coconut back in the shell because it looks cute. I did that just for you. Of course you can also buy a bag of grated coconut.
3/4 cup grated coconut
1/2 cup roasted and chopped peanuts
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Sprinkle sugar in a frying pan and melt it over low heat. If you aren't a fan of sugar but are cool with honey, I think honey would work fine, and I don't think you'd have to heat it. Of course then it's not vegan. Our sugar here is very local and relatively unprocessed, so I just stick with that mostly. It's also insanely cheap.
Once the sugar is melted, you can throw in the coconut, peanuts, and cinnamon. Of course you can use other nuts if you like. Cashews aren't quite ripe yet here, and almonds are outrageously expensive. Peanuts are everywhere though. Belizeans love peanuts. Whatever kind, just chop them up a bit.
You have to sort of intuit when this stuff is ready. The instructions said to remove the pan from the heat when the sugar was set. I'm not sure what that means, so I just stirred it around and mashed it down until it seemed like I could put it in a ball that it would stay in without crumbling. I tried to get a picture, but I couldn't. My kitchen is so dark!
You want to remove it from the pan while it's still soft and easy to shape. We have a melon baller, so that made my life a little easier. I ended up making half balls so I could mash them down to make sure it all stuck together.
These were absolutely amazing, and would be phenomenal covered in melted chocolate. Mmmmm.
Let me know if you make them.