ep 07: "breaking (coconut) bread"

How the stories of moving to a new city and moving through grief are baked into one family recipe.

Listen on Spotify | Apple Podcasts

How many tools does it take to open a coconut?

In my experience, it takes at least two sets of hands, a hammer, saw, bench vice, chisel, and a whole lotta commitment.

My first time even attempting to open a coconut was on a farm in Maui. Along with one of the other “WWOOFers”, we’d set out to use one of our days off to bake homemade granola—starting with making our own dried coconut. Safe to say, by the time we’d made our way through the husk, we could have hitchhiked to town, bought a bag of grated coconut, and come back.

worth it tho

The satisfaction, however, of finally seeing white flesh break through brown shell, cannot be bought.

Like so many things in life, something intimidating or a little difficult often comes right before something beautiful. And this episode is a toast to that.

See you on the show,

Nicole

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The Recipe: Coconut Bread (Bajan)

<3

Time: depends how fast can you can open and grate a coconut

Serves: enough to share <3

Ingredients

For the dough

• 4 cups all-purpose flour

• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar

• 4 tbsp baking powder

• 2 sticks butter (1 cup), melted

• 1/4 cup crisco (optional)

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 6 oz raisins, soaked in water (optional)

• 6 oz dried cherries (optional)

For the filling

• 1 fresh coconut, grated (~ 2 cups)

• ~1 cup water

• 1 tbsp vanilla essence/extract

• 1/4 tsp nutmeg, to taste

• 1/4 tsp cinnamon, to taste

• sprinkle of allspice

To make

1. Preheat oven to 325-350 (depending on how fast your oven bakes). Lightly grease two 9x5 loaf pans.

2. Prep the coconut filling. Start by grating the fresh coconut until you yield around 2 cups. In a small saucepan, add grated coconut along with 1/2 cup of water, spices, and vanilla essence. Cook over low-medium heat, tasting and adding water and spices as needed until it comes together in a kind of grated coconut paste. Set aside in a bowl.

3. Prep the dough. Start by mixing all dry ingredients together (flour, sugar, salt, baking powder). Add melted butter (and crisco if using). Mix and then knead into a stiff dough.

4. Divide the dough in half to make two loaves. Taking 1/2 of the dough, flatten into a circle with a diameter the length of the loaf pan. Spread 1/2 of the coconut filling onto the dough and roll into a log (kind of like how you’d start to make a cinnamon roll).* Place into greased loaf pan.

5. Repeat step 4 with the other half of the dough and filling.

6. Make some sugar water to base the bread by mixing 2 tbsp of sugar with some hot water. Brush onto loaves.

7. Bake for 50 min to an hour, until a toothpick or knife comes out clean.

8. Let cool in loaf tins before slicing and serving. Goes great with some tea!