• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Home Garden Joy
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Start Here
    • Seed Starting
    • Composting Basics
    • Vegetable Gardening
    • Growing Fruit
    • Growing Herbs
  • Recipes
    • Canning and Food Preservation
    • Vegetarian Meals
    • Salad Recipes
    • Soup Recipes
    • Dinner Recipes
    • Dessert Recipes
  • Books & Classes
    • Classes
    • Books
    • Books for Christian Herbalists
  • About
    • Advertise
    • Awards and Accolades
    • Privacy Policy

Recipe Fail – Coconut Bars

April 4, 2022 by Jeanne

Each weekend, I dig out my favorite cookbook – the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, 13th Edition. I flip through the pages, skimming the recipes, checking to see if I have the ingredients to make those that catch my eye. And then, I make the recipe, usually late Sunday afternoon after all the chores are done. It’s my relaxation, my Sabbath rest – baking. Cooking. Chopping, stirring, sautéing.

This weekend was no different. As I flipped through the Fannie Farmer cookbook, a recipe on page 630 promising ‘candy-like’ coconut bars called to me. I had just purchased a large back of unsweetened shredded coconut at the Amish bulk food store. What better dessert than gooey, candylike coconut bars? Count me in!

Baking a Wreck: My Coconut Bars

The good news: They taste good. Not great, but good.

The bad news: They look awful.

They refused to hold together. And by refused to hold together I mean crumbled into bits whenever we tried to slide one from the pan.

The resulting bars looked like lumps of something the cat threw up.

This was supposed to be a candy-like bar cookie….

So what happened? What did I do wrong?

  • I rushed my recipe. I didn’t read the whole thing before trying to cook it. I should have realized that the instructions for the “pastry bottom” were misleading. Usually, the Fannie Farmer cookbook has very clear directions, but this time the directions had the pastry mixed in the mixer. I should have cut the butter into the pastry mix by hand with my pastry blender in the same way I do when I make a pie crust.
  • Speaking of pastry crusts, they usually require cold butter. But, because this recipe called for the butter, flour, and confectioner’s sugar to be mixed in a mixing bowl, I softened the butter in the microwave. Problem was, I softened it too much, and it had been frozen before I threw it in the microwave. The result: big lumps of butter that wouldn’t cut into the pastry, melted butter, and a pastry mix that was impossible to get smooth and event.
  • My husband loves chocolate biscotti, and I had a batch of those going at the same time I baked the coconut bars. I moved the trays of biscotti to the upper shelf in the oven because the last time I baked them I burned the edges. The coconut bar pan went on the hotter, bottom shelf. Metal trays on the shelf over it reflected heat back onto the top of the bars as they baked. So, instead of a nice, gooey coconut candy on top, I got browned, crisped coconut on a thick, almost toffee-like crust. And all the coconut flowed to the edges of the pan as the egg, brown sugar, and coconut mixture bubbled and boiled into taffy/toffee/weirdness.

The Moral of the Story…

Never bake when you’re tired.

Crumbled coconut bars taste amazing as topping for vanilla ice cream.

In fact, I’m renaming the recipe “Coconut Toffee Topping” and calling it a day.

Whether this recipe was a cookbook fail (the directions for the crust weren’t quite right) or a failure of the cook (that’s a definite yes), I’m not quite sure, but out of all the recipes in the Fannie Farmer book, this one was a dud.

Coconut Bars, page 630 of the 13th Edition of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, is part of the “Cooking with Fannie and Me” series on Mondays at Home Garden Joy.

More Articles in This Series – Fannie Farmer Cookbook Recipe Reviews

  • Water Bread and Rolls
  • Eggless Cookie Recipe – Chocolate Peanut Clusters
  • Cooking with Fannie Farmer & Me
  • Easy, Healthy Split Pea Soup
Jeanne
Jeanne

Jeanne Grunert is a certified Virginia Master Gardener and the author of several gardening books. Her garden articles, photographs, and interviews have been featured in The Herb Companion, Virginia Gardener, and Cultivate, the magazine of the National Farm Bureau. She is the founder of The Christian Herbalists group and a popular local lecturer on culinary herbs and herbs for health, raised bed gardening, and horticulture therapy.

Tweet
Share
Pin1
Share
1 Shares

Filed Under: Fannie Farmer Recipes

Previous Post: « Propagating Peach Trees from Softwood Cuttings
Next Post: How to Start a Vegetable Garden from Scratch »

Primary Sidebar

Learn Gardening!

writer Jeanne Grunert

Hi, I'm Jeanne Grunert, master gardener, gardening book author, herbalist, and writer. If you're new to gardening, welcome! I make it simple and easy for you to grow a gorgeous garden and cook with the fresh vegetables, fruits, and herbs that you grow.

Let’s Connect!

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • YouTube

Featured

logo of the american horticulture society

Home Garden Joy was featured by the American Horticultural Society on #plantchat.

My Books on Amazon

cover of plan and build a raised bed garden

Visit my author page on Amazon to find all of my fiction and gardening books.

Herbal Academy Teachers

Footer

peach tree cuttings in a pot on a windowsill

Propagating Peach Trees from Softwood Cuttings

We decided that propagating peach trees from softwood cuttings was the way to go when we couldn’t find the variety we wanted at the store this past week. The best eating peach we’ve ever grown here at Seven Oaks Farm is “Red Haven.” It was recommended by our neighbor, a man whose family has farmed…

Read More

soul in a yellow mug against pine panelling

Made From Scratch Chicken Vegetable Soup Recipe

This is the best made-from-scratch chicken vegetable soup recipe you’ll ever taste. It’s a favorite of my family and I’m betting it will quickly become a favorite of your family’s, too. As part of my ongoing quest to test and taste every recipe in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook 100th Edition, I’ve made the Vegetable Soup…

Read More

A loaf of bread on a plate

Water Bread – Recipe Review

Once you make water bread, you’ll never eat store bought white bread again. In fact, you won’t be able to look at a loaf of “white bread” from the market and consider it bread, in any sense of the word, after you’ve taken a bite of the real thing. Hot. Crunchy crust. Tender, flaky, soft…

Read More

lemon on a lemon tree

Can You Grow a Lemon Tree from a Seed?

If you’ve ever wondered can you grow a lemon tree from a seed, the answer is yes, you can. But it takes patience and time to coax the tree into producing fruit. In the meantime, you’ll have to tend a tree that wants to grow into six, seven or more feet tall. Here’s the story…

Read More

Copyright © 2022 Home Garden Joy on the Foodie Pro Theme