Coconut Baby Dolls

Even though Christmas is behind us at this point, I wanted to relate something I had intended including during the Christmas holidays, and just got too busy with other things and forgot to include it.

When my Mother was a young girl each Christmas Santa Claus would bring her a coconut as part of her Christmas. She would carry that little coconut around until finally her mother or daddy would get it from her and use it in the baking.

I never got one myself from Santa, but I can imagine it must have been lots of fun having a Coconut Baby Doll to love for a few days. It must have been just as sad when its little face was cracked and all the goodies were removed! I'm sure most of you have seen a whole coconut at some point in your life time, with it's little eyes, nose and mouth. You punctured those holes with an ice pick and drained all the coconut milk from the insides and used it to help make your coconut cakes moist and delicious..

The goodie was very hard to get out of the shell. It required a good whack or two with a hammer. And then when you did get it opened there was still all the brown inner tough skin that had to be pried out and then peeled from the white coconut. Then came the grating. There were a few bummed up knuckles from getting them too close to the coconut. It was all very time-consuming but my Mother could bake a good coconut cake, especially at Christmas.

I'm sure she never worked with a coconut without having happy childhood memories rush over her as she worked.

I had intended to get The Little Princess a coconut for Christmas this past year, just to share a tradition fondly remembered by her Great Grandmother. I forgot this year, but maybe next year I'll be better at remembering. She'll be able to better appreciate it next year anyway.