CHOCOLATE COCONUT HAYSTACKS

Let’s keep it simple today and make a simple candy—2 ingredients and 10 minutes from from start to finish—coconut haystacks.

So being that this is only a two-ingredient dessert, don’t skimp on those two ingredients. Use a high quality chocolate, my personal preference always leads me to  Valhrona for the dark chocolate (or milk chocolate if that is your preference) and for the white chocolate I like Callebaut best. And for just a few of them, I sprinkled some freeze-dried raspberries on top for added flavor and punch in color.

I’m keeping this short today, because I have a bah-jillion administrative items on my to-do list. Something that I’ve promised Matt I would tackle 3 weeks ago, and before that it was 5 weeks ago and before that—well, it was quite a while ago.

But by administrative, I mean annoying things like: changing my hosting company to speed up load time here, proper filing of all my thousands upon thousands of photos, returning the stack of unusable Amazon items, filing contracts, POs and invoices, cleaning up my photography space and organizing my ever messy prop shelves and drawers  . . . and blah-blah-blah, yaddy-yaddy-yah.

And wah-wah-WAAHHH. I hate chores, because that’s what this list feels like . . .a long list of dreadful chores.

CHOCOLATE COCONUT HAYSTACKS

YIELD: 1 dozen one-half inch haystacks

Ingredients:

2 cups sweetened shredded coconut
4 oz. dark chocolate (at least 65% cacao), finely chopped
4 oz. white chocolate, finely chopped

Optional
1/2 oz. freeze-dried raspberries, crushed

Directions:

Preparation: Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with foil or parchment paper.

Sprinkle coconut onto baking sheet and bake until golden, about 6-8 minutes (make sure to stir every two minutes for even cooking). Remove from oven and evenly divide coconut into two separate bowls.

In the meantime place dark chocolate in a small microwave-safe bowl and the white chocolate in a second small microwave-safe bowl. Starting with the dark chocolate, heat bowl in 10-second bursts until completely melted, making sure to stir in between bursts; repeat with the white chocolate.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper; set aside. Add half of the coconut to the dark chocolate and stir until coconut is completely coated. Add the other half of the coconut to the white chocolate and stir until coconut is completed coconut.  Using a small spoon, scoop out two-teaspoons of coconut and chocolate mixture and drop it onto a parchment lined sheet.  Transfer finished candy to refrigerator to chill and set.

http://www.bakersroyale.com/chocolate-coconut-haystacks/