Kokada (Aruban Coconut Candy) is a traditional Aruban recipe for a classic sweet (candy) made from coconut flesh in a vanilla and rose flavoured syrup base that's often coloured with food colouring. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic Aruban version of: Aruban Coconut Candy (Kokada).
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Kokada is a coconut candy that originates from the islands of Curaçao, Bonaire, and Aruba. These candies can be bought anywhere on the islands. You can by them or at snack bars, but they are also an ubiquitous example of street food. The original recipe is for a Diwali sweetmeat from Goa in India, where it's prepared with both grated coconut and semolina and flavoured with cardamom.
Ingredients:
2 coconuts
500g of sugar
1 tsp of vanilla extract
1 tsp of rose essence
500ml of water
Optional Food colouring if you desire to colour the sweets (typically pink, red, green or yellow)
Method:
Break the coconuts open, take out the coconut meat and remove the dark skin from them. Now grate the coconut meats.
Pour the water into a saucepan over medium heat then add in the rose essence and vanilla extract. Add in the sugar and stir to dissolve. Keep cooking, stirring, until the syrup starts to crystallise.
As soon as the sugar syrup start to crystalize slowly pour in the grated coconut. Keep stirring until the mixture becomes thick. At this point reduce the heat to low.
With a wooden spoon, scope out the mixture in desired quantity and put them on a greased baking baking tray, letting the sweetmeats cool and harden.
If you want to colour your coconut candies add a few drops of food colouring to syrup mixture before adding the coconut
For dark brown colouring (to make Kokada Preto), leave the skin on the coconut meat before grating and use brown sugar instead of regular white sugar.
If you desire to make bigger and harder coconut candies, use 1kg of sugar instead of 500g.
To know if syrup has truly started to crystallise, you can use a spoon and take some of the sugar syrup and drip it into a cupful of water. If the water syrup a little bit to drop from the spoon and takes a little time to dissolve in the cup, this means that the syrup started to crystallise and is ready for you to add the coconut.
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