There are only three flavors I think should be combined with chocolate: coffee, mint and coconut.
I didn’t like it at all until I started doing the low-carb thing. Now I love it, especially coconut oil instead of butter/margarine I have switched over almost completely. Fresh shredded coconut is good for making chicken strips have a little crunch and it’s good for pie crusts or toasted on pumpkin pudding. The milk is good for making creamsicles and fruit puddings. I like the flavoring too. I use coconut extract and the flavored Davinci syrup for drinks and desserts. The only kind I don’t like is the dried out flaky bits that come in a package, usually coated in sugar. It’s like bits of wood. Blech!
Ohhh… I love that stuff, the smell of the beach. I hate to say it, but coconut tanning oil is sort of an aphrodisiac to me, I catch a whiff and I get a little stiff.
My standard answer for questions about why people don’t like stuff that i love: some people are idiots.
I know my mom hates coconut. I love it: fresh, cooked, or coconut flavored. I have taken to chewing piña colada flavored gum lately.
Either fresh, or fake is fine with me. My son and his father both do not like it. My son has said his objection is primarily to the texture.
Off topic but related: My sister and her husband were together for nearly fifteen years before she learned that he can’t stand coconut. It just struck us all funny because that seems like a long time for that not to have come up.
See, the thing for me is that I don’t mind “gritty” foods - polenta, corn chips, things like that I don’t mind.
There’s just something about the texture of coconut that sets my teeth on edge.
Fresh, just cracked open coconut, I can stand a little of. Anything else, blech.
I think the worst part is the texture, though even things that are just flavored to taste like it are generally bad too.
Picture it: Rochester, NY…1982.
A chubby, buck-toothed, pot-bellied kid with her hair in two puffs and her best party dress on.
I’m gripping my mom’s hand as she walks me to my cousin’s house. It’s my cousin’s 8th birthday, and my mouth is just a’waterin’ as I have visions of sweet, marbled cake, slathered in fluffy pink buttercream frosting with a picture of Cheer Bear on top. Or maybe she’ll be like my best friend and have a My Little Pony tripple layer cake with the candles that light back up after you blow them out. Hahaa! Good times. Trick candles are fun.
Imagine that little girl’s heart breaking as disapointment washes over her upon entering the birthday party to see sitting on a card table, flanked by paper cups and party hats, a big crazy looking homemade cake, shellacked with a thick layer of coconut frosting. Big dry pecans peppered the top and huge chunks of bitey, pulpy coconut bits clung all over the mud brown frosting. I could feel the tears wellling in my eyes. I knew, even then, I would be traumatized for life by this.
I do not like coconut.
ETA: Yuck
I love coconut in sweets. Anything else? Weird. Where I’m working provides food from time to time. Last time it was Mahi Mahi with coconut sauce. Bleh. Why ruin good fish that way?
I like coconut okay (I’m one of the meh voters), but when it’s mixed in with other flavors, like coconut jelly beans with other jelly beans, and you’re not paying attention to which ones you select, its taste can come as a bit of a rude surprise.
In other words, I like coconut when I expect to be eating coconut but I don’t like it if I don’t know it’s there.
I used to hate coconut. I’ve since acquired the taste, buy only for actual shredded coconut. I still don’t like it as a flavoring.
My cousin brought one of those to Christmas this past year. Yeah, I ate pie instead.
Love coconuts in all forms. Over here, it’s quite a treat to sit at the beach and order a fresh one, the top hacked off, a straw to sip the juice and a spoon to dig out the meat.
I’m kind of a picky eater. Not as bad now as when I was a kid. These days, I’m willing to give anything a shot, but I’ll still insist that yams, sweet potatoes and artichokes tastes like donkey balls, but outside of that, you couldn’t force either coconut or marshmellows down my throat if it meant I’d starve to death. Eeesh.
Ya freaks.
We had those in Tahiti. They were young, green ones, and “meat” wasn’t the hard white stuff of mature coconuts, it was translucent and jelly-like. Delicious and refreshing. Our host was so deft with the machete, he could hack off the top, then carve it into a spoon with a few quick strokes.
I particularly like the “Gourmet Style” American Macaroons, big, fluffly, fondant elf caps of yolked coconut …very little flour and egg… makes excellent use of the sugared “dessicated” coconut that is so popular. Then there were also these caramel coconut candies that Brach’s used to make and we’d get at Woolworth’s… think they also used coconut in their neapolitans… truly excellent, that was “turkish delight” in my mind’s eye.
ooohhh… new sundae for my favorite Dairy Queen, Brock’s Neapolitan- a base of xhoxolate soft serve ice cream, fresh strawberries and strawberry syrup (frozen strawberries with sugar and juice), Crumbled Mounds and Hot Fudge.
a base of half and half xhoxolate and vanilla soft serve ice cream
Whipped Cream and toasted coconut to top.