Kashata Vegan Coconut Treat
This one's for all y'all vegans out there! I was veg for 14 years and vegan for 6 of those, so I like to share delicious treats with you when I find them. Vegan desserts can be a challenge to find sometimes! This one is gluten free even!
We have so much coconut here. They just rot on the ground. So, I am always on the lookout for yummy coconut snacks. My kids are weird about coconut. One likes the meat but not the milk or the water. One likes the milk but not the water or the meat, but everyone actually really liked these Kashata. That's cause they're delicious. They're also crazy simple. I found the recipe in my favorite cookbook. Yes, I still have cookbooks. It's called The World of Street Food. It's a marvelous compilation of street food dishes from all around the world. Kashata is Swahili in origin.
This is a coconut after being husked. This is how you find them in the store. I'm not going to show the process of husking. If you live in a place with coconuts, it's totally worthwhile to know how to do it, though. You can find lots of videos on it. You can see I have already cracked this coconut. You can see the three eyes on the top. One looks a little different than the other two. Tap a hole in that one with a nail or screwdriver and a hammer. It should be really easy because that hole is softer. Then you'll need to tap a small air hole in one of the other two eyes. Now you can dump the coconut water out. Drink it! It's good for you! Then you can crack it by tapping with a hammer around the circumference. You don't have to hit it hard.
Now, check out this medieval torture device! This thing makes grating a coconut a breeze. You can find them in pretty much any store here, but in the US and Europe, you probably have to order one online.
So, you put half the coconut on like this, hold it firm, and turn the handle. Within a couple minutes, you have a bowl of grated coconut. This recipe calls for 3/4 cup, which is about half a coconut, but I'd double it because we definitely wanted more. I put the grated coconut back in the shell because it looks cute. I did that just for you. Of course you can also buy a bag of grated coconut.
3/4 cup grated coconut
1/2 cup roasted and chopped peanuts
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Sprinkle sugar in a frying pan and melt it over low heat. If you aren't a fan of sugar but are cool with honey, I think honey would work fine, and I don't think you'd have to heat it. Of course then it's not vegan. Our sugar here is very local and relatively unprocessed, so I just stick with that mostly. It's also insanely cheap.
Once the sugar is melted, you can throw in the coconut, peanuts, and cinnamon. Of course you can use other nuts if you like. Cashews aren't quite ripe yet here, and almonds are outrageously expensive. Peanuts are everywhere though. Belizeans love peanuts. Whatever kind, just chop them up a bit.
You have to sort of intuit when this stuff is ready. The instructions said to remove the pan from the heat when the sugar was set. I'm not sure what that means, so I just stirred it around and mashed it down until it seemed like I could put it in a ball that it would stay in without crumbling. I tried to get a picture, but I couldn't. My kitchen is so dark!
You want to remove it from the pan while it's still soft and easy to shape. We have a melon baller, so that made my life a little easier. I ended up making half balls so I could mash them down to make sure it all stuck together.
These were absolutely amazing, and would be phenomenal covered in melted chocolate. Mmmmm.
Let me know if you make them.
Kashata is an all time favorite snack in Tanzania, they hawk it everywhere. Goes Perfect with coffee.
I got excited reading ur post thinking you are in Tanzania. Hehe. Never the less, this post was a good find. I love kashatas, just wonder how come iv never thought of making them. Mmhh.
Time to get on it and try this recipe out.
Thank u for reminding me of my home .
That's what it said in the book. The author first had it on the streets in Tanzania! I'll have to try them with coffee! I would certainly love to go to Tanzania. It's definitely on my list. They're super easy to make, and I'm so glad I could remind you of home!
So when you say you were vegetarian for 14 years, are you then eating meat again now?
I am now also in my 14th year of being vegetarian and only this year I "sinned" a bit, eating one piece of sushi with some salmon in it while visiting a friend, but I have no real cravings for meat and fish, so at home I never cook with meat.
Yes. I switched back to omnivore some 9ish years ago. Every once in a while I would steal a piece of ham at Christmas or thanksgiving, but usually not because it would make me sick. The only other time was when I did sweat lodge. I would always have buffalo stew afterward because it was so grounding. I started eating meat again at a camp out. I had been thinking a lot about bio regionalism, but honestly it was a really spontaneous decision. Someone was making brats over the fire and offered me one because he didn't know I was vegetarian. I said yes, and I just never looked back. I liked being vegetarian, but I don't miss it. I do love how 14 years as a vegetarian gave me a much wider variety of meals to choose from. We certainly don't eat meat every day.
What was the exact reason of switching back to omnivore? Cuz Im having the inner fight of going vegetarian because of the ethical reasons but at the same time, I believe people are natural meat eaters as well....went vegetarian for 2 months already, then went back home for a weekend - and now Im back on omnivore diet again :/
Well, it was a combination of things. Part of it was thinking about the logistics of transporting the foods I needed to stay healthy all around the planet (especially in the winter) when I could get local, free range meat. I also was eating a lot of soy products and also feeding them to my kids, and I started to learn how bad excessive soy is. I also believe that plants are a lot more intelligent than people realize, and spiritually, I think it's fine to eat whatever and that it's important to be grateful to/for all of it at least in part because it sacrificed its life. Lastly, I just really loved it. I took that bite of bratwurst, and it was basically the tastiest thing I had ever eaten in my entire life. I ate bacon every morning for the next year.
these look great and I would love to cover them in chocolate. We all love coconuts and often fantasize about living in a country where they grow xx
They were so, so good. I was worried they were gonna be really hard like toffee or even peanut brittle because that kind of stuff just kills my teeth, but they were actually pretty squishy. If they'd sat for a while they may have gotten hard, but we polished them off pretty quickly. We have cocoa powder again, but we don't have peanuts anymore. Maybe I should check to see if the cashews are ready.