Ingredients

Method

For the filling:
• 2 cups fine desiccated coconut
• ¾ cup sugar
• 1 pinch ground cinnamon
• 1 pinch ground cardamom
• 1 cup water
• drop of vanilla or almond essence
For the pastry:
• 250 g soft butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 – 2 t vanilla essence or extract
• 3 cups flour
• 1 t baking powder
For the dark chocolate icing:
• ¾ cup icing sugar
• 3½ T cocoa
• 1 t vanilla essence
• 2 T milk
For the pink icing:
• ¾ cup icing sugar
• 2 T milk
• drop of red or crimson food colouring
• drop of vanilla essence

Method

Ingredients

FILLING:
1. Place the coconut, sugar, cinnamon, cardamom and water in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir and cook the mixture until the water is cooked away and the mixture forms sticky balls (about 10 minutes). Remove from the heat and add the vanilla or almond essence and stir.

PASTRY:
2. Add the butter to a mixing bowl and loosen it with a mixer. Add the sugar and beat for a few minutes until light and creamy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix.

3. Add the flour. (Do not pack the flour too tightly in the measuring cup. Just do a loose scoop and then scrape the top off with a knife, otherwise you’ll end up adding too much flour, and the pastry will be dry.)

4. Add the baking powder. Mix the flour and baking powder using a spatula and then use your hands to bring everything together. Once the mixture has formed a dough, cover it with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for 10 minutes.

5. Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Grease 3 shell pans with oil. Sprinkle the working surface with flour.

6. Roll out the dough to about 0.5 cm thickness. (You can also cover your dough with plastic wrap and roll it out.) Cut the dough into circles using a round cookie cutter.

7. Put the dough circles into the prepared shell pans and press down in the centre with your thumb. Fill the dough shapes with the coconut mixture and press it down, as the icing still needs to be added. Bake in the preheated oven for 12 – 15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.

DARK CHOCOLATE ICING
8. Put the icing sugar in a mixing bowl. Sift in the cocoa. Add a drop of vanilla essence and some milk – not too much (rather gradually add more milk if needed as the idea is for the mixture to be stiff).

9. Mix everything through with a spoon. If the icing is too light, add more cocoa. If the mixture is too stiff, add some milk and if the mixture is too runny, add more icing sugar and cocoa.

PINK ICING:
10. Put the icing sugar, milk, food colouring and vanilla in a mixing bowl and mix together with a spoon to form a stiff mixture. If the mixture is too runny, add icing sugar and if you want the mixture to be a bit paler, add more icing sugar and milk.

DECORATING:
11. Using a knife, spread some of the chocolate mixture over one side of the tweegevrietjies and spread the pink mixture over the other side.

Extracted with permission from Fatima Sydow - Cape Malay Cooking My story, my heritage. It’s published by Human & Rousseau.

Find more Eid recipes here.