What to use instead of shredded coconut
It depends entirely on what it's doing in the dish. Here's the job, what else does it, and what to skip.
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Bulk and chew in a bar or macaroon
The shreds soak up condensed milk or sugar syrup and set into a chewy mat, so they are the structure of the bar as much as the flavour.
Rolled oats, pulsed twice in a processorRan out
1:1 by volume
Chewy in the same way and much less sweet. The bar tastes of oat and the top browns several minutes faster.
Chopped dried apricots or datesRan out
3/4 the volume
Sticky and dense rather than fibrous, so the bar sets firmer and sweeter. Take 2 tbsp of sugar out of the recipe.
Grated marzipan or almond pasteRan out
half the weight
Binds hard and tastes strongly of almond. The bar comes out denser and wants about 5 minutes less in the oven.
What doesn't work: Coconut flour. It is defatted and milled fine, so it drinks several times its weight in liquid and turns a macaroon into a dry, crumbly puck.
Toasted topping for crunch and colour
Spread thin and toasted the shreds go gold and brittle, and the coconut oil in them smells sweet as it heats.
Sliced almonds, toastedRan out
1:1 by volume
Crisper and browner with no sweetness of its own. It toasts in about half the time, so watch the tray.
Panko toasted in butterNut-free
1:1 by volume
Crunchy and neutral, so toss 1 tsp of sugar through it before it goes on a dessert or it reads savoury.
Chopped toasted pecansRan out
3/4 the volume
Richer and heavier, and it stays crunchy in a wet filling far longer than coconut manages.
What doesn't work: Sweetened flaked coconut where the recipe asks for unsweetened. It carries roughly 30 percent added sugar, so it scorches to bitter black under a broiler in a couple of minutes.
Sweetened and unsweetened are not interchangeable by volume. Sweetened is moister and adds about 1 tbsp of sugar per 1/4 cup.