Sage & Coconut Biscuits

Well, once again I find myself with things sitting around my cupboards and I want to be using it up....but also I like to expand my recipe base at the same time. Often we find ourselves stuck in with the way we cook, bake or go about preparing food.

When we venture out of that box and go back to the drawing board some interesting points tend to be raised. First of all you can do nearly anything - with what you've got. I am not one for special ingredients or strange stuff I will never use again or in anything else.

Secondly, we can tend to have some types of food we enjoy but only prepare it one or two ways. I was like that with cabbage, which I posted on yesterday with a lovely slow cooker recipe. But, I am also like that with coconut.

I love coconut - and use it shredded in several dishes such as muesli, cookies and cakes. I also like the coconut milk in rice dishes and a couple of soups I make. But that seemed to be it really - so yesterday I set about playing around in the kitchen with blocks of creamed coconut.

And the results were quite interesting! I ended up with a lovely biscuit that the kids loved and I can't wait to taste. It looked very much like a scone but I was told it was sweet and creamy tasting with a different texture from a floury scone.

To make these biscuits I did the following!

2 1/4 cups spelt or barley flour 

200 g creamed coconut

1 tablespoon rubbed sage

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 cup water (hot)

1/2 cup goat's yogurt or sour milk

sea salt

In a saucepan I poured the 1/2 cup hot water and added the coconut block - this was gently heated on the wood stove while being stirred until it was uniformly melted. In the meantime I preheated the oven to 180C and placed a piece of parchment over a baking sheet.

Next I measured out 2 of the cups of flour into a deep mixing bowl and added the other dry ingredients (soda, salt and sage). This was sifted around to mix thoroughly. In another small dish I placed the goat's yogurt - I ended up using half yogurt and half sour milk. (add 1 teaspoon cider vinegar to make the milk sour).

After mixing the milk mixture in with the coconut I added this to the flour in the deep mixing bowl. It will blend nicely into a soft ball which you can then turn out onto a floured surface. Use the extra flour to handle the dough sprinkling a little over top to keep it from sticking to your hands.

Flatten it down a little and start punching out round circles (sort of like cookies or scones) and placing them onto the cookie sheet. Once the dough is used up, sprinkle some more sage over top and put them in the oven for about 15 to 17 minutes. 

They turned out wonderfully (I made them twice with different flours) and smelled like they had butter inside - but they don't, it's just lovely coconut!

April

Sage & Coconut Biscuits