Natural Sweetened Coconut Recipe – A great alternative to the store bought stuff

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Many may ask, “why do I need to make natural sweetened coconut when I can just go buy it at the store?” Well, let me tell you a story.

Every year around the Christmas holiday I love to bake up lots of cookies to give to family and friends. Many of the recipes I make call for sweetened coconut. In recent years I have found myself really reading ingredient labels carefully and try to buy products that are all-natural with no weird chemical names that I can’t pronounce. This year, when shopping for sweetened coconut, I was surprised to realize that what I have been using all these years contains both Propylene Glycol and Sodium Metabisulfite.

Both of these chemicals are considered as “generally recognized as safe” by the FDA, but overall I usually try to avoid ingesting chemicals of any kind, and would rather not feed them to my loved ones either. So I set out to find a sweetened coconut without chemicals, but could not find one, so I decided to make my own.

I happen to keep all-natural, organic unsweetened coconut around for cooking, so I just re-hydrated it with a simple syrup and voila! I can’t believe I never tried this before!

Use this natural sweetened coconut in my magic cookie bars or raspberry coconut squares.

Here’s how you make it!

All you have to do is combine 1/4 cup of water and 4 teaspoons of sugar, then heat the mixture until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Next, stir in 1 cup of all natural unsweetened coconut flakes until all the liquid is absorbed. You can then let it dry before storing in the fridge, or use immediately. I hope you enjoy making natural sweetened coconut at home now that you know how easy it is!

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Natural Sweetened Coconut Recipe

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 5 minutes

Total Time 15 minutes

Servings 1 cup

Author Around the World in 80 Cakes

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup water
• 4 tsp sugar
• 1 cup (about 2oz) unsweetened coconut (preferably organic)

Instructions

1. In a small saucepan heat the water and sugar until the sugar has completely dissolved.
2. Remove from heat and stir in the coconut. Keep stirring until all the liquid is absorbed. You may need to let it sit for 5-10 minutes to allow the coconut to re-hydrate.
3. Use immediately, or spread onto a cookie sheet and allow to dry before storing.