Gabulhi Boakibaa

Gabulhi Boakibaa is a traditional Maldivian baked short-eat made with gabulhi (young coconut), flour, sugar and maafen (jasmine water). You can skip the maafen if you don’t have it on hand or use a couple of tablespoons of rosewater in its place.

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cup grated young coconut (2 medium gabulhi will do)
• ½ cup flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 4 tbsp.maafen
• 1 tsp. oil (for oiling the tray)

Instructions:

1. First, dealing with the young coconut. After you open it, you can either grate it like you would a normal coconut or you could scrape the flesh with a spoon after scoring it with a knife. Either way, add the scraped flesh or the grated flesh to your mixer and blend until it looks fine and somewhat smooth. The young coconut is going to release its juices. So, at the end it’s going to look a bit like a paste too.
2. Add all the ingredients to a bowl and mix until everything is well combined.
3. Preheat the oven at 200 degrees Celsius.
4. Rub oil on the bottom and sides of a 6-inch round pan and add the mixture to it. Smooth the top with the back of a spoon.
5. Place the pan on the middle rack of the preheated oven and bake for 45 minutes or until the top is golden and it’s baked all the way through (if you don’t have an oven, rub the oil on a medium sized pan, add the mixture, smoothen the top, put the lid on and cook on very low heat until the top looks dry and the bottom is golden. For us this took around 30 minutes. Then flip it and cook for another 15 minutes or until the side now on the bottom looks golden).