Hoppy the Penguin was an entrepreneur. Now, you might think it unlikely that penguins would be entrepreneurs, and you would be right. Penguins are conservative. They wear only black and white, get exactly twelve hours of sleep a day, and any penguin who bucks the colony gets excommunicated to Alaska.
But Hoppy wasn’t like the others. Even as a penguinet, he was out on the ice, building imposing castle sculptures, filleting salmon and snapper neatly with his beak and whizzing out delicate sushi rolls while the rest of his peers gulped herrings down whole and doodied in the snow.
When he was two years old, Hoppy officially decided that he wanted to be an ice sculptor. He began to save up for an ice studio, but soon discovered that studios were prohibitively expensive and becoming more so each year.
“Ice is in short supply these days,” explained Hoppy’s Papi. “We’re losing 500 properties a year to melting floes.”
“You’re better off investing in solar energy,” added Hoppy’s Mami.
“Solar energy?” said Hoppy, scratching his head feathers. “But that just melts ice.”
Mami and Papi shook their heads sadly and waddled off. Hoppy frowned. He saw the sense of his parents’ logic, but didn’t want to accept the dashing of his sculpting dream.
A few weeks later, the colony was astounded by the delivery of several giant box crates, airdropped by a noisy cargo plane. Hoppy rubbed his flippers together excitedly and hopped over to inspect his order. The other penguins crowded around, but Hoppy managed to slide the crates down to his house without anyone seeing the contents.
The next day, Hoppy got up early and made multiple trips back and forth from the crates to his studio, until two of the crates were completely empty. Next evenfall, he stood back and inspected his work. A five-foot tall, eight-foot wide demi-sphere stood in front of him, white and glistening, anchored in a solid brown base.
Floppy, Hoppy’s next-door neighbor, sidled up to him. “I don’t get it. It looks like an igloo. But it’s not made of ice.”
“Right,” said Hoppy.
“Well?”
Hoppy pulled a few strands out of the igloo and handed them to Floppy. “Have a taste.”
Floppy chewed on the white material. “Doesn’t taste like fish. What is it?”
“Coconut,” said Hoppy. “From the opposite end of the world.” He scooped out a handful of the igloo’s base and sucked on it. “And this is chocolate. From Central and South America. It’s delicious.”
Floppy made a face. “It looks like poo. Why would you eat poo?”
“It’s great mortar.”
“Are you really going to live in that?”
“Yep. And I’m going to make more.”
And that’s just what Hoppy did. And when the great blue icebergs began to melt in earnest, Hoppy lashed his igloos together with ropes hewn from coconut, turned them upside down, and used them as rafts to sail to the islands whence the coconuts came, thus beginning the period of his life known as Hoppy the Penguin in Tropical Paradise.
- 2 cups dried shredded coconut
- 2 tb grassfed gelatin (omit for vegan/sub agar-agar)
- ¼ tsp sea salt
- 3 tb tapioca flour
- 2 tb coconut oil
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2-3 tb honey or maple syrup (to taste)
- 3-4 tb water
- Mix the ingredients together in the order listed (add water at the end as needed to make mixture adhere).
- Form into semi-circles on parchment paper and bake at 325 until coconut begins to brown.
- Melt one bar of dark chocolate or half a cup of carob chips (for AIP) in a double boiler or microwave and dip macaroons once they've cooled.
Playing around with alternate weatherproofing methods. Although aesthetically-pleasing, Hoppy found this model less robust in harsh meteorological conditions
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