Recipe
🍰 DESSERT
Coconut Turnover
Soft sweet yeasted dough folded around spiced, sticky grated coconut, a Saint Lucian bakery treat.
Saint Lucian · medium · serves 8
prep 40 min · cook 25 min
~687 cal · 7g protein · 71g carbs · 43g fat · 8g fiber · 40g sugars · 34g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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The coconut turnover is a fixture of Saint Lucian bakeries and home kitchens, a handheld pastry that turns the island's abundant coconut into an everyday sweet. Sold warm from bakery cases across Castries, it is the kind of treat bought on the way home or packed for a child's lunch.
The filling is the heart of it: freshly grated coconut cooked down with brown sugar until sticky and dark, scented with cinnamon, nutmeg, and a little vanilla, and sometimes tinted rosy with a drop of coloring in the traditional style. This spiced coconut is spread over rounds of a soft, enriched yeast dough, which are folded over, sealed, proved a second time and baked until golden. The turnover is bread, not pastry: a rich sweet dough is what holds it together, and a proper one is packed with filling rather than sprinkled with it.
Simple and comforting, the coconut turnover pairs the Caribbean love of coconut with the British-inflected baking tradition of the islands. Warm from the oven, the soft dough pulling apart to reveal its sweet, fragrant centre, it is a small, familiar pleasure of Saint Lucian life.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally vegetarian and egg- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 8
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cold butter
1 cup warm whole milk
4 tsp instant yeast
1/4 cup sugar for the dough
2.5 cups freshly grated coconut, fresh or frozen
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp each cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and vanilla essence
1 bay leaf
1/3 cup sugar water and brown sugar, to glaze
Instructions
1
Rub the cold butter into the flour with a pinch of salt until it looks like coarse crumbs.
2
Stir the yeast and the dough sugar into the warm milk, pour it into the flour, and knead briefly to a soft dough. Cover and leave to rise until doubled, about an hour.
✎ Chef’s note
The milk should feel warm to the touch, around 105F, no hotter. Too hot kills the yeast and the turnovers stay dense.
3
Meanwhile cook the grated coconut with the brown sugar, spices, vanilla, bay leaf, and a splash of water until sticky, dark, and fragrant. Discard the bay leaf and cool completely.
✎ Chef’s note
Use fresh or frozen grated coconut, never the dried desiccated kind, which drinks the syrup and turns the filling sandy. Cook it down until it is sticky rather than wet, and a drop of red colouring at the end is the traditional bakery look.
4
Knock the dough back, divide it into 8, and roll each piece into a 4 inch round.
5
Spread a heaped spoonful of coconut over each round to within half an inch of the edge, fold one side over to the other, and press the seam and the ends firmly shut. Set them seam-side down on a lined tray.
✎ Chef’s note
Be generous with the filling. A turnover with only a sprinkle of coconut under the crust is the usual complaint about a bad one.
6
Cover and let them rise again for 30 minutes.
7
Brush with sugar water, sprinkle with brown sugar, and bake at 350F for about 18 minutes, then brush and sprinkle again and give them 3 minutes more to set a sugary crust.
8
Cool a little on a rack and eat warm.
Saint Lucian bakery tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
Castries. Green fig means green banana here and nothing else; the fruit fig has no part in it at all. Unripe bananas are boiled in their skins until the flesh turns firm and waxy, then tossed through salt cod that has been soaked and flaked, with onion, sweet pepper and thyme.
🗺️
Saint Lucia. Green fig means green banana, not the fruit. The national dish pairs it with salt cod, which is a colonial make-do: European salt fish arriving on the same ships that carried the plantation economy, meeting the bananas that grew everywhere, and the two boiled and dressed with onion, sweet pepper and local seasoning.
🌍
North America. Almost every regional cooking here records who arrived and on what terms. Enslaved West Africans brought rice, okra, black-eyed peas and the techniques behind Lowcountry and Creole food; Chinese railway labour and later Italian, Jewish, Mexican and Vietnamese arrivals built the way the cities eat; and Indigenous foodways sit underneath all of it.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Saint Lucia
Green Fig and SaltfishSaint Lucia's national breakfast: boiled green bananas tossed with sautéed salted cod, peppers, and herbs.
Saint Lucian BouyonA one-pot soup-stew of salted pig tail, beans, ground provisions, dumplings, and greens in a coconut broth.
Saint Lucian Pumpkin RiceRice simmered with sweet pumpkin, coconut, and island herbs into a soft, golden one-pot, an everyday Lucian lunch.
Browse all Saint Lucia recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Oven.
Storing it: Store in an airtight container. Most keep 2 to 3 days at room temperature, and longer refrigerated.
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Frequently asked questions
What is Coconut Turnover?
Soft sweet yeasted dough folded around spiced, sticky grated coconut, a Saint Lucian bakery treat.
Where does Coconut Turnover come from?
Coconut Turnover is a Saint Lucian dish from Castries, Saint Lucia.
Can Coconut Turnover be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Coconut Turnover recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Coconut Turnover safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Coconut Turnover take to make?
About 65 minutes total (40 minutes prep, 25 minutes cooking), serving 8.
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