On my 100-day journey of creating a signature CBP we are now on a flavour journey. Last week we tried ginger. This week it’s one of the two most popular flavour suggestions to come out of my Instagram stories: coconut.
This week we are going nuts!
Disclaimer up front: While I love coconut in my curries and milkrice and in all things savoury, I haven’t fully come on board coconuts in sweets train. I will have only a single piece of pol-toffee, for example, and it took me while to get around to pol-cake. I refuse to eat Bounty, or any other chocolate-coconut mix.
The coconut week was tricky. The thought of having to taste coconut-flavoured CBP made me drag my feet a bit. However, the other taster in this process is all about anything coconut. And I didn’t want my personal prejudices to stand in the way of something flavoursome.
A tough nut to crack
As usual, I went with incorporating flavour, i.e. coconut, to the three main components of the CBP: the filling, the biscuit, and the soaking liquid.
A: The filling. Chocolate ganache with coconut cream replacing thickened cream
B: The soaking liquid. Coconut milk as the soaking liquid for Marie biscuits
C: A coconut biscuit replacing Marie biscuit in the CBP
C was the tough nut; took a while to crack that. I wasn’t a fan of any of the ready-made coconut biscuits available in the supermarket; there isn’t a massive range either. So, I decided to make my own coconut cookie. As J had once commented on my shortbread crust of blueberry lemon tart, I thought of making a coconut shortbread cookie to replace Marie biscuits.
I have written about Sally’s Baking Addiction before. That site is named quite correctly because her recipes definitely lead to an addiction to baking (or worsens the one you already have). As that is my go-to baking recipe site, I decided to make her lemon coconut drop shortbread cookies, but with a few alterations. I couldn’t find sweetened shredded coconut or coconut extract. Instead, I used desiccated coconut but added 2 tea spoons of coconut cream for moisture and coconut flavour. The cookies were amazing!
I halved Sally’s recipe because I did not want 3 dozen of a cookie I haven’t tried before. Half of it I made according to the original recipe, a drop-cookie with a lemon glaze. The other half, intended for the CBP filling was made flatter and without a glaze.
Both were delicious!
For the CBP, I used these without soaking them in milk as the shortbread is quite crumbly.
On to the taste test.
Cream-ping my style
The coconut cream based chocolate ganache was… different. I can’t say it was bad or inedible because it wasn’t. But the texture was a little grainy, the consistency a little different which made the mouth-feel strange. This might be good for people who do eat coconut cream based sweets regularly, or for vegan diets. It just wasn’t the texture I wanted, so I wasn’t keen on playing with ratios to figure out the consistency.
Score: 1/5
Not exactly a vic-tree
The Marie biscuits soaked in coconut milk tasted good. It add a nice earthy coconut flavour to the overall CBP without being too overwhelming or affecting the textural elements of the dessert.
Having said that, I felt that the flavour was rather subtle, and there wasn’t enough depth.
Score: 3/5
Shell, yeah!
The final CBP, the one with coconut cookies was really good! As the cookie was not soaked, it added a nice crunchiness to the overall dessert while still allowing the spoon to cut through without breaking the biscuit. It definitely elevated the CBP, and added depth.
Admittedly, the coconut shortbread also has lemon, which would enhance the flavour. Notes for the next time is to make the cookie even thinner to help with the ratios.
Score: 5/5
Coconuts are absolutely plant-astic!
The bottom line is coconut flavoured CBP is very much in the lead right now. There are some tweaks to be made, such as making the cookie thinner. Considering how well this turned out, I might even find sweetened shredded coconut and coconut extract and try the cookie recipe with those.
The only unfortunate part is I wouldn’t be eating too much of this because I still can’t handle much of coconut in sweets. All the more for J, though, so honestly, this is such a shell-fless act.
Until next time –
Minoli Wijetunga 