Recipe for coconut triangles by Kornelia Santoro

This is one of my mother’s recipes and my favorite sweet treat when I was a child. My mother is one of the best when it comes to baking cakes, try pies and all kinds of sweets. She used to bake 2 or 3 cakes for every weekend according to the German tradition of coffee and cake. In the afternoon the family gathers and enjoys a good cup of coffee together with several slices of cake. I guess I have mentioned my brothers’ and father’s huge appetite before: Each one can digest at least 3 pieces of cake with ease. Imagine how much my mother had to cook all the time to feed her family!

As I wanted to stay slim I never indulged as much in food as the rest of the crowd. But when my mother made coconut triangles, for sale I forgot all restraint as well. There is something about the sweet crunchy coconut in combination with apricot jam and chocolate icing that makes me happy – and many more people, too.

Ingredients (for 24 triangles):

• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 cups sugar
• 2 tablespoons vanilla essence
• 2 eggs
• 400 gram butter
• 400 gram desiccated coconut
• 300 gram apricot jam
• 300 gram dark cooking chocolate

Method:

Pour the flour into a mixing bowl. Add the baking powder, 1 cup of sugar, 1 table spoon vanilla essence, the eggs and 150 grams butter. I normally melt the butter which makes mixing of the dough much easier. Now combine all the ingredients until you obtain smooth dough. Spread some butter over a normal size cookie sheet. Roll out the dough big enough to cover the entire cookie sheet. If you have difficulties rolling out the dough, put a big piece of cling film over it. Roll out the dough under the plastic film and transfer it to your cookie sheet. Place the dough in the cookie sheet, remove the cling film and spread apricot jam on top of the dough. Place 200 grams of butter together with 2 cups of sugar, 1 tablespoon vanilla essence and 4 tablespoons water into a pot. Bring it to a boil while stirring well. Then turn off the heat, add the desiccated coconut and mix everything well. Let the mixture cool down and spread it over the apricot jam.

Bake everything in the oven for around 25 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius. The coconut should take on a lovely, golden-brown color without burning. Let it cool down for some time, then cut the sweet into 12 rectangles, then slice every rectangle into 2 triangles. Melt the cooking chocolate with the rest of the butter in a double boiler as described in the recipe for chocolate brownies. Stir it well and – with a cooking brush or a knife – spread the chocolate icing over the corners of the triangles. Let the chocolate set before covering the triangles.

Kornelia Santoro is a German food writer living in Goa, India, with her Italian husband and her son. She has published two cookbooks, Kornelia’s Kitchen – Mediterranean Cooking for India and Kornelia’s Kitchen 2 – Cooking for Allergies. Both have won the Gourmand World Cookbook Award. All her recipes are easy, fast and delicious – the right kind of food to keep your family healthy and happy without spending too much time in the kitchen.