Two-Ingredient Mexican Coconut Candy

 

There’s a few different variations on Mexican coconut candy. I’ve seen a really pretty version that is striped and tri-colored – green, white, and red – not unlike the stripes on a Mexican flag. It’s a very neat candy to look at, but it’s a bit labor-intensive to make.

Another variation on Mexican coconut candy is called cocadas. They’re soft and chewy candies that are oven-baked to golden brown. Seeing as though cocadas provide a similar flavor profile to the tri-color version of the candy, but are much simpler and quicker to make, I decided to test-run a recipe for cocadas!

Wow, these little candies are amazing! Lots of coconutty deliciousness, and they’re incredibly soft and chewy. But you absolutely must adore sugar. If you’re only mildly a sweet-tooth, you may want to skip these.

They remind me a lot of macaroons, but they’re possibly even sweeter. It makes perfect sense though that they would be little sugar-bombs, since they only contain two ingredients: shredded sweetened coconut, and sweetened condensed milk. Yep, that’s it!

However, I had leftover chocolate ganache in the house, so I decided to give these Mexican coconut candies a dunk. Why not? They tasted like Mounds bars!

That step is completely optional, of course, but if you happen to have leftover ganache or melted chocolate sitting around, then I highly recommend it!

The semi-sweet chocolate really cuts through how sweet these are. It is a delightful and welcome contrast! I doubt it’s very traditional to dunk cocadas in chocolate, but it was totally delicious nevertheless.

With two ingredients, 30 seconds of mixing, a few minutes to fill the muffin cups, and 10-15 minutes of baking, you really cannot beat the speediness of this Mexican Coconut Candy recipe!