YUMMY YUMMY COCONUT CRUSTS!

The most delicious thing you can eat here in Belize (besides chocolate) is coconut crusts. We had them for lunch when we went to Blue Creek. Since we are going snorkeling tomorrow, we thought it would be a good idea to make them for ourselves and bring them along for lunch. I would like to share the recipe with all of you and save it for future reference myself.

Side note: Belizeans are not precise people. I have no actual measurements so it might take a few tries to get it right. And without Andrea, we would’ve been unsuccessful.

First you need coconut. In the U.S. you can probably buy grated coconut, but here it is authentic. We bought two from the market this morning. If we had a machete, Andrea would’ve used that, but we didn’t so we had to scoop out the coconut with knives. Then we grated it into fine pieces. It took a lot of work, but made it all worth it!

Next, you cook the grated coconut over the stove with sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla extract until it is brown. This took us about 20 minutes of consistent stirring so it wouldn’t burn.

To make the dough, you combine a pound of flour, baking powder, a little sugar, a little salt, and just a little vegetable oil to keep it together. You kneed it, and then roll it into balls the size of a cue ball.

Once the cocnut mixture is cooked, flatten out the balls of dough into a circle. It should be nice and evenly thin. (After making them, I’d say the thinner you can get them, the better!)

Next add the coconut mixture into the center of the dough.

Fold the dough over the mixture to have a crescent shaped crust.

Use a fork around the edges to seal it tight.

Spray a little pam or oil onto a baking sheet and place crusts on the sheet. Cook in the oven (the oven was on max so I have no real temperature for you) until a nice golden brown. It should be about 10-12 minutes and Andrea flipped it over at one point to make sure it was even.

Sarah and Andrea

This will definitely be a trial and error kind of baking. Ours were delicious but not as good as Juans. Good luck to anyone making them and let me know how it goes!!

Holding our finished coconut crust