Beach Vendor · Coconut Candy
Cocada
Photo: Dtarazona / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
The dark 'cocada queimada' gets its brown color purely from slow-caramelized sugar, not chocolate or coloring — some vendors cook a single batch for over an hour.
Chunks of coconut cooked down with sugar into a chewy candy, sold in small paper cups by baianas walking the sand with trays balanced on their heads. Comes in a pale 'branca' version and a darker, more caramelized 'queimada' version.
Why it's made this way: Bahia's Atlantic coastline is lined with coconut palms, and the confection has been a fixture of the state's beach-vendor economy since colonial Portuguese sugar-and-coconut trade took root here.
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Part of World of Street Food — 690 dishes from 118 countries.
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