Coconut Bars – 12 Days of Cookies

We are halfway through our 12 Days of Cookies extravaganza thing, and I chose something familiar, the coconut bars from 1953. I had these many times while growing up, but I’ve never made them myself and I felt it was high time to do so. They made me feel so very retro I wanted to burst into renditions of old standards like That’s Amore or Rags to Riches, both #1 songs from that year.

Is it cheating to make bar cookies? Seriously, these are so easy to make and they have a wonderful gooeyness about them that is incredibly rich, and we said the pieces need to be small because it is so rich. It’s a small recipe for an 8-inch square pan, but often that’s all you need for an afternoon tea or an easy dessert.

Makes 24 bars.

Be sure to visit all our friends in the cookie clan to see what cookies they chose as well as the Gourmet website to see all their favorite cookies from 1941-2008.

The Rest of the Cookie Baking Clan

Courtney of Coco Cooks

Jerry of Cooking By the Seat of My Pants

Judy of No Fear Entertaining

Sandy of The Bakers Bench

Claire of The Barefoot Kitchen

Kelly of Sass & Veracity Read more

Easter Bunny Cake and a Lesson in Frugality

When I was a little girl, my mother used to make a bunny cake for us at Easter. She cut the instructions for assembling the cake out of Parade magazine in 1968 (photo below), which showed a finished cake as well as diagrams for cutting two round cakes into the shapes necessary to make two ears, a head, body, and four paws, and for assembling the pieces. She saved the instructions in her recipe box, carefully folded and taped to hold it together, but it’s been many years since she made one. Now that I have children and we go to visit my parents around Easter time, she decided to revive the tradition and on Sunday we all made a bunny cake together. The boys were very excited about the cake, and my oldest helped with the decorating. Let’s just say there was lots of coconut everywhere! I don’t remember ever helping my mother make the bunny cake when I was young, so it was especially heartwarming for me to watch my children help her.

To make the bunny, you bake two 9-inch round cakes using whatever cake recipe you choose, though it should be a cake that isn’t too soft because you need a texture that will stand up to carving and frosting on the open cut sides. We tried a Five Flavor Pound Cake recipe but skipped the soaking syrup, and it tasted great and worked very well for carving and frosting. (I plan to make that cake again with the soaking syrup and post about it separately.) After the cakes have cooled thoroughly, cut each cake according to the diagrams below and then place the pieces together. We used a plastic bowl as the pattern to cut the circle piece, then just cut the large ring into eight pieces. After frosting the cake, decorate with flaked coconut, jellybeans, and licorice. Instead of adding a bow, we made a “pearl’ necklace out of jellybeans and named our bunny Pearl. Read more

Chicken Kelaguen (Kelaguen Mannok)

This dish is one of my fond memories of four years spent in Saipan. Local celebrations always included chicken kelaguen, red rice, empanadas, pancit, and other delicious island foods.

Traditional kelaguen starts with a whole chicken, cut in half or in pieces, that has been grilled till cooked but still juicy. Then you combine the remaining ingredients and stir with the chicken and let it stand and cool for an hour or so. To enjoy, put some into a tortilla and wrap it up and eat it. The sweet fresh coconut balances the heat of the peppers and the tartness of the limes.

Fresh coconut is key, so don’t buy sweetened flake or frozen coconut, which has added sugar. Read more

Experiment: Coconut Cream Sorbets

When the weather turns hot, I start thinking of icy cold desserts, and this summer is no exception. I have ice cream on the brain these days, which got me to thinking about how to make a sorbet reminiscent of tropical “umbrella” drinks…something fruity, icy cold (and nonalcoholic for my summer pregnancy).

I found a recipe on Allrecipes that uses cream of coconut and lime juice and I thought that it would adapt to other tropical juices as well. So I tried two batches, one Persian lime and one pineapple, and I made the sorbet mixes in a blender bottle for easy cleanup. We tasted the sorbets right after they were finished and again after they had sat in the freezer for 24 hours, and we decided that the sitting period was important. Read more

Grandma’s Coconut Cake

We love this cake for holidays and birthdays. The nearly 100-year-old recipe was handed down to my mother from my late paternal grandmother, who learned it from my great-aunt Gladys. My mother tried for years to get the recipe right because it’s my father’s favorite cake. When Mom finally made a coconut cake that tasted like Grandma’s, Grandpa proclaimed that she was now “a McClure.”

The boiled frosting is the most difficult part, but when done correctly it has a consistency very much like a soft marshmallow creme. It can be very tempermental based on humidity, so make sure your kitchen is cool and dry. Store the finished cake in the refrigerator, otherwise the frosting will drip and run. Read more