Coconut mini muffins, an adventure with too much coconut flour.

I read a recipe for a cross between donuts and bagels that intrigued me. They were made with coconut flour and sweetened with raisins. The most interesting thing about this recipe is that they were cooked in a mini-donut machine.

I have, so far, avoided buying one of the little donut/cupcake/mini-pie bakers, because honestly my garage is FULL of seldom used, single purpose small kitchen appliances. Enough is enough, right?

But, I was intrigued  by the the "Donagles" on this page. This is Jennifer Priest's website and this is a page on Paleo diet friendly snacks for kids.

Disclaimer: I am not following a Paleo diet, or any other kind of diet, for that matter.

So, off to Amazon I went to get some coconut flour. If I had been paying attention I would have seen that the recipe called for 1/3 of a cup of coconut flour and I was ordering a 3 pound bag. So this big bag of coconut flour comes in and darned if it doesn't say on the bag that it should be kept in the freezer, or at the very least in the refrigerator. Of course the bag it came in was not resealable.

The artwork on this bag suggests that the company is related to "Nuts About Florida". Or at the very least they use the same graphic artist.  So, into mason jars went the flour, until I ran out of mason jars, that is. The rest went into another zip top bag and into the freezer. Did I mention that this is best used in a few short months? Yikes!

I made some changes to the printed recipe, of course. I used dairy milk (I don't have issues with dairy, thank you very much). I also had a mason jar full of flax seeds and no flax flour (flax meal?) so I just put the flax seeds in the Vitamix with the other liquid ingredients and let 'er rip.  When I got to the part about sifting the coconut flour I said "Oh hell no" and just put it in the Vitamix, too. As a matter of fact, the only thing that didn't get the blender treatment was the raisins and the walnuts.

This recipe is the perfect size for a mini-muffin pan. I baked them at exactly twice the time recommended for the mini-donut cooker and they came out great!

The only thing is, they taste exactly like bran muffins to me. They do not have a bagel texture at all. If you are avoiding grains, this is a great recipe. For me, it was just a delicious experiment.

Now I have to cook other stuff with coconut flour and see if I can pass this off to my coworkers. They might suspect something is a little off about these, due to the "rough" texture. If cooking these for others, I will top them off with some cinnamon sugar to give that first sweet bite.

Any suggestions for my next coconut flour experiment?

Happy Mother's Day to me!

My new microwave couldn't be installed in THIS spot because the granite comes up too high. My last one was finessed in by Rick, who did several jobs for me when I moved in. I don't think I truly appreciated the fine work he did.

Anyway, there is one brand of microwave that has a back bracket big enough to install it here. So I get to go another week without it. Boo, hiss. I never really thought about how much I used it until I couldn't.

This reminds me of the time I replaced my washer/dryer. I wanted a front load and there was only one model that would fit my laundry closet. Remember these beauties?

Guilty pleasure

I confess, I watch In the Kitchen With David on QVC every Sunday afternoon. That man makes the best yummy faces!

I just have to get stronger about not buying stuff.

I love El Bodegon

Really, I do. For the uninitiated, El Bodegon is a local chain of latino (latina?) grocery stores. A few weeks ago I got it into my head I was going to make fresh tortillas. Corn tortillas, that is. Thanks, Alton Brown, like I needed another thing I just had to try. So I bought a bag of masaca harina and made up a little paste. I tried to roll it out thinly but that stuff just wouldn't cooperate.

Being the gizmo kind of girl I am, I decided to get a tortilla press. Well you would think such a beast would be easy to come by in these parts, but it wasn't in any of my usual housewares spots. They are quite heavy and I didn't want to pay shipping, so I thought it would be better to drive all over WPB to find one. Just as a last minute desparate try I went into El Bodegon. It had been years since I had wandered its fascinating asiles, and it didn't disappoint me. There were 2 different tortilla presses to chose from. And they were cheaper than the ones on eBay, to boot.

As a bonus I found small cans of chipotles in adobo sauce. Publix has them in cans too big to use in one recipe. Alrighty then.

But mostly I love El Bodegon for its entertainment value. I'm sure I must have spent an hour in there looking at all the exotic stuff. The produce is wonderful and I bet the meat would have been good too, if I could have gotten close to it. It was busy in there and the peeps were 2 and 3 deep at the back of the store where I think the butcher section is. There are 2 different places to sit and eat, I didn't notice what the difference was, except the one on the west side seemed a lot busier.

Foodies, try it sometime, you'll see!

The tortillas were awesome, by the way. Problem is, I am the only one in this house who ate them, so I've got to make a little space in the freezer next time I have a tortilla making session.