Besitos de Coco & Golden Sunset - Puerto Rico

la ricetta in italiano qui

Here we are, at the very end of Joan's Culinary Tour 2010 in the South Borders. We have been travelling for more than 2 months visiting different countries in Central and South America,.We started from Mexico and moved to El Salvador, Nicaragua, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, Haiti and Cuba. Last stop this week is in Puerto Rico, the smallest island of the Great Antilles.
I would like to thank Joan for being such a lovely and charming guide along the tour, giving me the chance to discover and enjoy all these countries I might not ever visit in my life!
And I would like to thank also all blog-fellows who joined the tour and delighted us with incredible and surpsing dishes.
At last a special pray to Joan: please, don't let us wait too long for next tour!

Besitos de coco & Long Drink Golden Sunset

Both recipes of Besitos de coco (Coconut Kisses) are from El Boricua, a monthly bilingual cultural publication for Puerto Ricans. Besitos are Puerto Rican cookies and a great candy that people made in their homes for the holidays.

Besitos de Coco

old fashion style

You need:

2 cups grated coconut (bagged will do)
1½ cups brown sugar
1 cup water

- Combine the coconut and water in a medium pan and bring to a boil.
- Add the brown sugar and stir.
- Cook on low heat until the sugar melts and the texture is thick and very sticky.
- Drop by tablespoons on a greased cookie sheet or on cookie sheet covered with waxed paper (or make little balls with your fingers waiting a little time to allow the mixture cool a while) and let the cookies cool down.
- This makes about 20 soft cookies.

Besitos de coco Rican Chef

You need:

1 large dry coconut (I used one cup of bagged coconut)
4 teaspoons butter
8 tablespoons flour
4 egg yolks
1 lemon peel shaving
1 cup brown sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla
¼ teaspoon salt

- Pre-heat the oven to 170°.
- Crack open the coconut and take out the pulp but DO NOT take off the brown peeling.
- Wash the coconut and grate it.
- Measure 3 full cups of grated coconut by pressing the coconut down in the measuring cup.
- Combine the coconut with the butter, flour, egg yolks, lemon peel, brown sugar, vanilla and salt and mix well.
- Make little coconut balls with the mixture and set aside.
- Thoroughly grease a glass baking pan (or use baking paper) and place the coconut balls in the pan.
- Bake the coconut kisses for approximately 10/12/15 minutes (depending on size) or until golden brown.
- This makes about 30 cookies.

Golden Sunset
Recipe and text from Cocktail - Sigloch Ed.

Puerto Rico, the smallest island of the Great Antilles, is considered the home of the grapefruits. It can be proven that the fruit, which belongs to the same family as the pamplemousse, was harvested there for the first time in 1750. Their name, derived from "grape", is explained by the fact that grapefruits do not grow individually on branches like oranges or lemons, but close together in large clusters, which with a little imagination can look like huge grapes. Grapefruits juice is a little acid and bittter but very rich in vitamin C.

Each glass:

Crushed ice
120 ml fresh grapefruit juice
2cl lime juice
1 bar spoon sugar syrup, to taste
2 cl grenadine syrup

- Put part of the ice into the shaker, add grapefruit juice, lime juice, sugar syrup and grenadine syrup and shake well.
- Fill a long drink glass up to one third of crushed ice, strain the mixture over this and serve the drink with a straw, preferably in the afternoon or evening.

today's golden sunset on the lake

Hope to join another Culinary Tour soon!