Coconut Candy

Contributed by

Paul J. Swiatocha, Jr.

Inspired by

Our trip to Maui. We found a small self-serve fruit stand while we were driving around the island, and had this AMAZING coconut candy whose only ingredients were coconut and sugar. I have tried many many many times to replicate it, and this is the closest I could get. It's not the same, but it's close.

Ingredients

• whole fresh coconut
• sugar
• water

Step by step

• Poke through the three holes at the top of the coconut using a screwdriver and hammer.
• Drain and discard coconut milk.
• Wrap the coconut in a towel and crack it into large pieces using a hammer.
• Remove the coconut meat from the shell. Using a paring knife, remove brown outer layer from coconut pieces.
• Cut coconut meat into approximately half-inch strips.
• Take each strip and thinly slice it into about 1/8 inch slices (so each piece is one-half inch X the width of the coconut meat X 1/8 inch).
• Make a sugar-water mixture so the mixture is slushy and viscous, but more liquidy than it is dry.
• Soak cut coconut in mixture overnight.
• One by one, take pieces out of mixture, shake off the excess liquid, and lay them out on a metal baking pan. Do not overlap the pieces.
• Cook in a 300 degree oven for about 10 minutes. TIME WILL VARY based on the thickness of the coconut pieces. Remove the coconut when the pieces are nicely browned and carmelized.
• Let pan and coconut cool. The candy will be stuck to the pan. Scrap the coconut candy off the pan with a thin metal spatula.
• Store candy in an airtight containor.