Huni Gulha

Huni Gulha reminds us of those children’s birthday parties of the eighties. Balloons, crepe paper decorations, musical chairs; those parties delivered some memorable good fun with some equally memorable good food.

Making Huni Gulha is easy peasy; you really, really don’t have to do much. Plus you can make them in any colour you want. We made ours with ordinary scraped coconut but if you have some fresh young coconuts on hand, you should know we’ve met people who have sworn that young coconuts are the way to go when it comes to Huni Gulha.

Makes: 14 Huni Gulha

Ingredients:

• 1 cup scraped coconut
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 tbsp. flour
• 3 inch piece of raanbaa
• 3 tsp. rose water
• 2-3 drops food colouring

Instructions:

1. Combine the sugar, scraped coconut, rosewater and raanba in a large pot.
2. Keep the heat at low to medium and while stirring continuously, cook the mixture until the coconut softens a bit and the sugar dissolves. When this happens the mixture is going to stop sticking to the sides of the pot and come together in the middle of the pot. Remove the raanbaa.
3. Add the flour and food colouring and mix well. A little note about flour: too much flour will cause the Huni Gulha to become too hard, so rather than using a heaped tablespoon, use a level tablespoon.
4. Once the flour and the food colouring are mixed well, switch off the heat and remove the mixture from the pot.
5. Using your hands, roll the mixture into little balls. You’ll have to do this while the mixture is still hot as the mixture will begin hardening, as soon as you take it off the heat.