Bukayo

Coconut strips cooked in muscovado until the syrup will hold them in a heap.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 500 g young coconut, in thin strips
• 300 g dark muscovado sugar
• 150 ml water
• 0.25 teaspoon salt

Method

1. Use young coconut, soft enough to bend. Mature coconut is woody and stays woody; no amount of syrup softens it.
2. Melt the sugar with the water and salt in a wide pan over a medium heat, swirling rather than stirring, until it is a smooth dark syrup with no grains left on the pan wall.
3. Coconut in. Stir to coat, then leave it to bubble steadily, stirring every couple of minutes. 20 to 25 minutes.
4. It passes through three stages and the middle one is the trap: loose and wet, then a thick bubbling syrup that looks finished and is not, then a sticky mass that pulls away from the pan in a lump.
5. STOP WHEN A DROPPED SPOONFUL HOLDS ITS SHAPE on a cold plate and does not spread. Taken off before that, the heaps slump and weep sugar overnight; left longer, the sugar goes past caramel into bitter.
6. Drop in tablespoonfuls onto baking paper or into banana-leaf squares, pressing each one together with the back of the spoon.
7. They firm as they cool, in about an hour. Airtight once completely cold, and not before -- warm, they sweat and fuse into one block.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

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