Coconut Pineapple Muffins

A while back it was suggested to me to try coconut flour in place of the traditional flours of all purpose, whole wheat pastry flours, etc.  I've tried it twice now and apparently I had blocked out my first experience when I attempted this morning to modify a pineapple muffin recipe I found on the internet.  When I saw how this was going, I did a quick search on the internet and found the problem . . . coconut flour acts like a sponge and absorbs liquids without seeming to add any moisture to the mixture.  If a recipe calls for 2 cups all purpose flour and 1 cup of liquids, you need to cut back on the flour included and up the liquids.  Hopefully I will remember that the next time I cook with coconut flour.

In addition, the recipe I was working from included dairy products, including eggs.  Since I don't eat meat or dairy, I made other substitutions.  You can usually get by with adding a banana or vegan yogurt in place of eggs in recipes and since I had a rotting banana sitting on my counter, I started with that.  In hindsight I see where that would be a mistake when you are starting with a flour that needs all the moisture it can get and a banana really doesn't provide that.

So I added a single serving container of vegan vanilla yogurt.  It helped but wasn't quite enough, so I added a second container of the vanilla yogurt.  It was looking a lot better by this point but still not where it needed to be so I added 1/4 cup of canola oil.  By now the batter was close enough to what I was looking for that I loaded up my muffin pan and started to bake.

The finished product, though delicious, wasn't quite the recipe I was looking for.  It produced a moist muffin that didn't quite hold together completely.  I obviously need to tweak the recipe some more and possibly cook a little longer.

Having said that, here is my working recipe:

Ingredients:
2 cups coconut flour
1/2 cup maple sugar
1/4 cup canola oil
1 banana (mashed)
2 5.3 ounce containers of non-dairy vanilla yogurt
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1/2 fresh pineapple chopped
3/4 cup almond milk
1/4 cup non-dairy butter
water (I kept adding trying to get the right texture - I probably added about a cup of water)

Preparation:
1.  Preheat oven to 375 and lightly oil a 6 muffin tin.
2.  Combine the flour, sugar and baking powder in a large bowl.
3.  Add the remaining ingredients and mix until well.
4.  Distribute mixture in the muffin tin (will completely fill tin).
5.  Bake for 35 minutes.

Makes 6 muffins.

Obviously you can use a 12 muffin tin and adjust the time of baking but since I used a 6 muffin tin, this is how I did it.  As I said, it produced a delicious, moist muffin but it didn't quite hold together properly.  I still have half the pineapple chopped up so I see a take two in my future.  :)