Angola and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Dessert.
A Bit About Angola
This week we visit the African country of Angola. New York has many restaurants representing the continent, but for some reason, there aren’t any Angolan ones. Angola is situated on the west coast of southern Africa and is the second-largest Portuguese speaking country behind Brazil. They were colonized by Portugal in the 15th century and slavery was abolished in the late 1800’s. Their cuisine is influenced by the Portuguese and is melded together with African ingredients.
When searching for a dish to recreate I stumbled upon recipes for cocada amarela. Cocada is a dessert made from coconuts + sugar that I’ve seen in my research for my cookbook. It kind of resembles a coconut macaroon. Many Latin American countries have similar recipes the only difference being that cocada amarela has egg yolks in it.
A Mess Is Born
Guys, I really was excited to make this dessert. It has all the makings of something super delicious (hellooo sugar + coconuts!) and had very simple directions. I wanted this dessert to be as authentic as possible so I bought cute little hairy coconuts from my local market to grate.
I was doing a fairly good job cracking coconuts, grating them, doing all the things that I even decided to film myself. Everything was going super swell until it didn’t.
When adding the eggs to the coconut syrup mix you have to be very careful to not let the eggs curdle (basically don’t let your eggs turn into scrambled eggs). By adding bit by bit to the coconuts in the pot it should essentially help thicken the mixture and make your dessert thick + rich.
With all my fancy efforts + swiftness in the kitchen, my dessert was a flop. The eggs curdled and my dessert was ruined. It was a lumpy disaster of super sweet scrambled coconut eggs - I feel like that might be a thing somewhere?
Transparency = Honesty
So why did I admit that my dessert was crap, well for starters I feel like the internet, mostly social media curates images of folks doing things perfectly. Rarely do we see screw-ups in the food world. Chefs rarely talk about when things get burnt and home cooks with blogs don’t fess up to the amount of trial + error it takes to get a recipe right. I want to be honest and tell the world I failed miserably. I tried my hardest + still fell short. I was pretty upset that I wasted so many eggs (6! - I luckily saved the whites for breakfast) and that I had spent so much time grating those lil’ funky coconuts into smithereens.
I personally want to normalize failure as something that’s actually okay. Yeah, it bummed me out for a couple of hours that I worked really hard in the kitchen to no avail, but I didn’t let it bring me down. If anything it made me appreciate the recipe even more + gave me more gumption to give it another go. What can I say? Sometimes bad food happens to good people.
The Comeback Kid
I didn’t want to write this newsletter without a recipe so I gave myself a fresh start the following day to try the recipe again. This time I looked up videos of other folks preparing it to see what exactly I did wrong + what I can do to make it right. After watching one video 50 times in a row I embarked on making cocada amarela one more time.
My results actually came out pretty good. I was able to breathe a sigh of relief when the eggs didn’t clump together into what resembled my breakfast. The cocada came out delicious. The dessert is very sweet and holds a thick pudding-like consistency - although it’s not smooth like pudding in texture due to the coconut. I had mine warm out of a coconut shell and it tasted just like a hot macaroon. You don’t really taste the egg at all. Again, it’s mostly to thicken the mixture while it cooks + to add a bit of richness.
Would I make this again? Maybe. I know I’d definitely just buy unsweetened coconut flakes in a bag next time instead of spending 30 minutes cracking coconuts + grating them. Also, making a smaller batch (I halved the original recipe) really helped dry up the mixture as it cooked. My first disastrous batch wouldn’t dry out since it had scrambled eggs in it so making a small batch was definitely helpful the second time around.
The Goods
Here’s the recipe for this tasty dessert. I even got the courage to shoot another video for the second batch. My editing skills are not the best (so bear with me!) but you can see the process on how it’s done.
Angolan Cocada Amarela
½ cup sugar
1 cup water
2 cloves
1 cup shredded unsweetened coconut
3 eggs yolks, beaten
Pinch of salt
In a saucepan over medium heat cook sugar, water, and cloves until they come to a rapid boil and sugar is completely dissolved. Once sugar water has boiled for 4-5 minutes remove cloves and add coconut. Continually stir for about 10 minutes then remove from heat.
In a bowl beat yolks and a pinch of salt until thick and frothy. Add a small spoon of coconut mix into yolks while continuously stirring making sure eggs are not curdling. Repeat with another spoonful. Slowly pour egg yolks into the remaining coconut mixture vigorously stirring so eggs do not curdle. Once incorporated put back on the stove on medium to low heat. Continuously stir the mixture for 10 to 15 minutes until most of the liquid has evaporated and the cocada is thick + sticky looking.
Serve warm or cold + enjoy!
Next stop in the Eating A-Z in NYC series we hit up Antigua + Barbuda!
Cook. Eat. Repeat.
Natalie
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Well done Natalie on persevering ❤️ we should be more aware that behind every victory there's failure, what we could call... experience! Time to change the narrative 🙌🏼