Project Coconut Phase 3 was about Pineapple Coconut Muffins.
So the residue from the process of making coconut milk was the source of coconut flour. I have sometimes seen coconut flour used in gluten-free baking recipes, but never used it. To change the residue to coconut flour, I dried the residue completely at 175 F in the toaster oven for about one hour. It became light powder, which was supposed to be coconut flour. So many things can be homemade!
So what to do next. I remembered J's another idea was pineapple upside down cake with coconut. I searched a recipe related to about 1/2 cup of coconut flour, pineapple, and cake online. Something with other flour like almond flour or all-purpose flour wasn't not really ideal because my homemade coconut flour was the star. During the research, I learned coconut flour behaves very differently from other flours. "It's absorbent", people say, or warn. I see, the recipe with the only coconut flour called for ridiculous numbers of eggs. I would like to avoid that situation. Then, finally I ran into a
recipe of Pineapple-Coconut Muffins - only coconut flour, pineapple, something like cake. I considered about whether 4 eggs for 8 muffins could be overlooked. I can't challenge the coconut flour's natural character anyway, so I simply followed what the recipe called for. But I made a few changes on the recipe: reducing maple syrup to 1/4 cup, replacing butter with coconut oil, and using canned pineapple in its juice that I had in hand instead of fresh pineapple. I also used a little piece of candied cherries for decoration.
I made nine muffins instead of eight. The result was something I had not imagined. In fast, I had no idea how it turned out. While I was mixing all ingredients, the dough didn't become thick that the recipe said. My coconut flour didn't seem adsorbent. I hoped a magic would happen during baking. The muffins were risen up and baked to lovely golden brown while the inside was like custard pudding or bread pudding. They were nice. I liked them. Just unexpected.
This was the end of our Project Coconut. It was pretty much enjoyable with a lot of new discoveries!
