Oh, the happy coconut.  I thought we’d start off with a little coconut nostalgia. Please enjoy this tropical moment from YouTube, then we can go on to more serious coconut matters.

Be sure to stop by iTunes,  Amazon MP3 or Google play and purchase this song Coconut, by Harry Nilsson. It’s a must have for your summer playlist:)

Okay, now that we’re all feeling really tropical.

I wanted to share one of my recipes.  It was inspired from the tropical book I wrote and am currently editing.

Toasted Coconut “Chips” Dipped in Dark Chocolate

These little candies are perfect for a special treat, a gift for your favorite coconut + chocolate lover, a great barbecue take-along, or an after school snack. From start to finish, this recipe takes about forty-five minutes to create.

Ingredients:

1 fresh coconut from your local grocery store

2 dark chocolate 3.5 ounce bars (I used Lindt 70% cocoa, Smooth Dark for this recipe)

Prepare the coconut:

First, crack the coconut in half and drain the water (or keep for another recipe). I placed the coconut in the grass and hit it with a hammer. It cracked very easily.

Next remove the meat from the hard shell.  One technique is to run a butter knife between the white meat and the brown shell.  Then score the white meat with a sharp knife into 2 inch chunks, and use your butter knife to “shimmy” out the chunks.  You want the coconut to stay in as large of pieces as you can manage.

Using the butter knife to ‘shimmy’ out the coconut meat:)

Once you have the chunks of coconut out of the shell, take a vegetable peeler and peel away the darker skin from the white

meat.  Save the meat.

Peeling off the darker layer

Now use the side slicer on a box grater or a paring knife and carefully cut the coconut meat into thin slices.

Grating into slices to make “chips”

Placing the coconut slices on the baking sheet to put in the over for toasting

Place these slices onto a baking sheet and bake at 350° for 3 – 10 minutes depending on the thickness of your slices — until toasted.  You want the edges to be light brown.

Cool.

 Prepare the chocolate for dipping:

Break up the chocolate bars in a bowl

Break up the two dark chocolate bars into squares and place in a bowl.  On fifty percent power, microwave the bowl of chocolate for a minute, stir.  Repeat until all of the chocolate is melted.

Dip the cooled toasted coconut “chips” into the dark chocolate and place each chip on a platter lined with wax paper.

The toasted coconut “chips” dipped in dark chocolate ready for the fridge

Put platter into the fridge for ten minutes or until hard.

Enjoy!

Store in airtight container with layers separated with wax paper in the refrigerator.

What is your favorite tropical candy?  Let us know click on the comment balloon next to this post’s title at the top.  If you have a recipe that you’d like to share, we’d love to try it.

Hope to see you next week.  Thanks so much for stopping by.

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