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Recipes with or desiccated coconut

5 recipes that use or desiccated coconut, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Tapioca crêpe, takes 15 minutes. It is most often cooked with sugar, coconut milk and milk.

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Bolo de mandioca

Grated raw cassava makes a cake unlike any flour cake: heavy, sticky and pudding-like, with a chewy golden crust and a moist, almost translucent middle. Bolo de mandioca (or bolo de aipim in Rio) is baked all over Brazil, sold by the slice at roadside stands in the interior of Bahia and Minas, and is a regular at June festivals next to the corn cakes. Coconut milk and grated coconut make it fragrant, butter makes it rich. Fresh cassava is sold in Latin, African and Caribbean shops; frozen peeled cassava is fine once thawed. Raw cassava must be fully cooked, and baking this long is enough. A classic error is blending in the fibrous core of the root, which leaves woody threads in the cake; cut it out first. Chef's tip: squeeze a little of the liquid out of the grated cassava in a cloth before mixing, and the cake gets a firmer, more cake-like texture without turning dry.

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Cuscuz de tapioca

Breakfast stalls in Salvador and the street markets of Recife and Fortaleza sell cuscuz de tapioca by the slice from a big round tray, often with a drizzle of condensed milk on top. It needs no cooking at all: granulated tapioca (tapioca granulada) soaks up hot sweetened milk and coconut milk and swells into a firm, white, bouncy cake with a chewy, pearly texture and a gentle coconut taste. It is eaten cold, at breakfast or as an afternoon sweet with coffee. Granulated tapioca is a Brazilian product made of small irregular crumbs, not pearls; Brazilian shops sell it in bags. Cutting it too early is the usual mistake, and the slices crumble because the granules are still dry at the centre. Chef's tip: pour the liquid in while it is steaming hot and cover the dish straight away; the trapped steam swells the granules evenly.

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Canjica (mungunzá)

Big white corn kernels simmered until tender, then cooked again in milk with coconut and peanuts: canjica is the warming bowl that every festa junina from Porto Alegre to Belém hands out in plastic cups on cold June nights. In the Northeast it goes by mungunzá, and in Bahia and Pernambuco it is often made richer with coconut milk. The kernels stay chewy and whole, the broth turns creamy and smells of cinnamon and clove, and the crushed peanuts add a nutty bite. Look for white hominy sold as canjica or milho para canjica in Brazilian shops; dried white pozole corn works too. It needs overnight soaking, which is not counted in the times. The common mistake is rushing the first boil: if the kernels are not fully soft before the milk goes in, they will never soften afterwards. Chef's tip: a pressure cooker cuts the first cook to 35 minutes and leaves the kernels perfectly tender.

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Tapioca crêpe

Tapioca is the Northeast's favourite breakfast, cooked on griddles at beach stalls from Recife to Fortaleza and now loved all over Brazil. Damp cassava starch (goma) is sieved into a hot dry pan, where it fuses into a thin white disc that's soft, chewy and slightly crisp. This recipe gives two classic fillings: melting cheese with butter, and coconut with condensed milk. Chef's tip: hydrate the starch until it feels like damp sand that holds when squeezed, then sieve it into the pan and never press it down. A loose, even layer is what makes the starch melt into one lacy, flexible sheet.

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Semolina squares

Soft, spongy steamed squares of semolina and gram flour, made tangy with sour yogurt and raised with fruit salt, then finished with a mustard, sesame and asafoetida tempering, coconut and coriander. A quick farsan for tea or a light breakfast. Serve with green chutney.

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Goes well with or desiccated coconut