Monday, January 17, 2011

Vegan Bake-arama!



Another marathon recipe creating day for my new cookbook . . . and on a crazy warm 80-degree winter day in California too! But I have to take advantage of those days off from work.

I bought some coconut flour that I wanted to experiment with, so my first try was a coconut-ginger shortbread. I used half coconut flour and half brown rice flour, plus coconut oil, sugar, ground ginger, and shredded coconut. Sounds like a good combo right? Well, it came out looking and smelling great and actually it had a really nice taste, but the texture was like eating powder. Not pleasant at all. Well, back to the drawing board on that one but luckily my next two experiments did a lot better.

I took a break from the coconut flour and tried a muffin combination that my daughter suggested . . . orange and chocolate . . . and created Chocolate Chip Orange Muffins. And they came out great--moist, with gooey chunks of chocolate and a hint of orange throughout. Two thumbs up from the whole family.

I wanted to give the coconut flour another try so for my last experiment I thought I'd go for some banana-coconut muffins. I used half coconut flour and half whole wheat flour, plus mashed bananas, coconut milk and shredded coconut but the batter came out very stiff--so . . . I turned them into Banana Coconut Scones. And they were yummy--moist inside with a nice crisp crust. Another hit with the family.

Sometimes creating recipes reminds me of writing a novel. You kind of let your characters loose and wait to see what they decide to do.

BTW -- if anyone is using coconut flour, please feel free to let me know what has worked and what has not worked. Next I want to try coconut sugar.

3 comments:

~M said...

Most coconut flour recipes rely on LOTS of eggs (ie, too many to replace as I think you're usually supposed to stick to recipes that use 2 or less eggs...right?). This said, you should check out the Spunky Coconut blog since she sometimes makes vegan treats that use milk alternatives, apple sauce, chia seed meal, etc. to make vegan treats with coconut flour. :) Good luck!

Buffy said...

That was smart to change it to scones when the batter was too stiff -- It wouldn't have occurred to me -- which is why you are the cookbook author. :)

I really want some chocolate and orange muffins now!

Very excited for you with this new project! <3

Unknown said...

THanks for the tip M. And thanks for the encouragement Buffy . . . hope we can share a batch of muffins one of these days!