In the weeks leading up to Easter, I baked a lot of different cakes and cookies. One simple cookie stood out. The recipe comes from Magnus Nilsson’s The Nordic Baking Book (2018). Nilsson calls the cookies Coconut Pyramids. In Danish, they go by the name kokostopper, and in Swedish, kokostoppar. If you like coconut macaroons, then you will love these buttery cookies. The recipe makes about 20 pyramids.
2 eggs
90g sugar
200g desiccated coconut
good pinch of salt
75g butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
“Preheat the oven to 175°C/345°F and line a baking sheet with baking (parchment) paper.
Put the eggs and sugar in a bowl and whisk until mixed. Add the desiccated coconut, salt and the butter and stir until fully combined. Let the batter sit for 20 minutes so that the coconut can absorb a bit of the moisture and swell, this makes shaping the pyramids considerably easier.
Spoon 20 piles of the mixture onto the prepared baking sheet and shape them into pyramid shapes using your hands or a spatula. Bake for 10-15 minutes. They should be golden on the edges of the pyramid but blonde on the flat sides. Coconut pyramids go dry if overcooked. Remove from the oven and leave them to cool.”
This might be one of the tastiest—and certainly the easiest—cookies I have ever made. When I first read the recipe, I wondered if shaping the pyramids might be tricky, but it’s not. I used my hands to form some of the pyramids and a spatula to make others. I think hands work best. In his introduction to the recipe, Nilsson writes that “[t]hese pastries don’t have to be shaped like pyramids, I just like them that way. It works just as well to simply spoon them out onto the paper in rough piles before cooking them.” I like the pyramids, too. The shape makes for a fun cookie.
What makes kokostoppar special is the rich butter and coconut flavor. Many of the coconut macaroon recipes that I have collected do not include butter and use only egg whites. I have eaten plenty of these versions and some are great. Personally, I like the option of making a rich coconut cookie. I also like that these kokostoppar aren’t too sweet.
