Himalayan Salt

Gluten Free Strawberry Coconut Muffins

Gluten Free Strawberry Coconut Muffins recipe photo
Gluten Free Strawberry Coconut Muffins
Photo by recipe author

Servings: 6-12 muffins
Preparation Time: 10 minutes

Muffins:

Cream Cheese Topping:

  • 1 cup homemade or store bought cream cheese, softened
  • 1 cup chopped strawberries, fresh or frozen
  • 1 – 3 tablespoons raw honey

For the muffins:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a small bowl, combine coconut flour, salt and baking soda.

In a large bowl mix the eggs, honey, coconut oil and vanilla until well blended. Mix dry ingredients into the wet, blending with a hand mixer or by hand. Gently fold in strawberries.

Place batter in paper lined muffin tins OR oil small individual glass bowls and pour batter in about 1/2 – 3/4 full.

Bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes. Take them out and let them cool and serve topped with Strawberry Cream Cheese.

Cream Cheese:

Place everything in a blender or food processor and blend till smooth. Store in an airtight container in the fridge. When muffins are ready, generously top each muffin and enjoy!

Recipe submitted by Marillyn, Bloomingdale, IL

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Making a Light & Fluffy Gluten-Free Coconut Flour Muffin

Once again I found myself with overripe bananas just begging to be used. No matter how long I tried to hide them in the refrigerator they just wouldn’t go away or stop yelling at me every time I opened the door.

Today however, I was finally able to silence them. I dug up an older coconut flour recipe that I had been meaning to improve for a while now. The results from the recipe were satisfactory and tasty, but it definitely could be made even better. For me, it has to be perfect. Well, pretty near that anyway. As I wrote earlier in my post about the Coconut Flour Cocoa Banana Muffins, coconut flour baked goods don’t have to be dense and heavy. With just a little of your time, the know-how, and a good recipe, you can make an excellent coconut flour pastry.

But what if you don’t have a good recipe? How do you improve it? Well first off, know what you don’t like about it, then break the recipe down. Take a good look at it. Here I’ll show you by letting you take a look at the original recipe ingredient list and then showing you my improvised version. Why only the ingredients? Because that’s where the problem is. Also, I only use Tropical Traditions’ coconut flour, and can’t guarantee that the recipes developed using our coconut flour would work with a different coconut flour, because they can vary in protein and fiber content. If the problem was in how the recipe was put together it’d be a different thing. So here it is:

So, we’re looking at a whole cup of coconut flour (which is a very thirsty flour by the way) and only 2 tablespoons of milk as the “thinning” liquid. The fat (butter and coconut oil in this case) are liquids here, but they act differently then water based liquids and don’t help out too much in saturating the flour. The first conclusion is that there isn’t enough liquid. That means the batter is too heavy to rise and “mushroom” over properly, and will therefore be very dense and heavy. It will be moist and pretty tasty though, since the fat amount is perfect.

Another red flag is the sweetener amount. Only 3 tablespoons for 12 muffins isn’t very much. While you don’t want a sickeningly sweet muffin you do want just enough sweetness to bring all the flavors together, instead of leaving it bland. Since we will be increasing the thinning liquid amount, the sweetener will grow blander and will therefore need to be increased as well.

I like my muffins to rise really well (since that is the main downfall of most coconut flour recipes), so I’ll add a bit of baking soda. The coconut flour is a heavy flour, so it usually needs more baking soda/powder to get it to rise. Baking powder has a more neutral taste then baking soda, which needs to be countered by the acidity of another ingredient (here it will be the honey). However, I’ve found that baking powder isn’t as potent as baking soda, so you usually have to use more of it, or add a bit of baking soda to help it out.

So that’s that. The eggs are fine. Leave them be please; every single one of them is needed to make up for the gluten – don’t find out the hard way! Everything else is fine also.

In the end, we get this:

Gluten Free Coconut Flour Banana Muffins recipe photo
Gluten Free Coconut Flour Banana Muffins
Prepared by Sarah Shilhavy, Photo by Jeremiah Shilhavy

True, they aren’t the prettiest muffins you’ve ever seen, but looks aren’t as important as taste and texture. The tops are a bit irregular, but the muffins rose well and are light and fluffy on the inside, not to mention delicious!

Now take a minute to compare the before and after recipes, and then head off to the kitchen to whip up a batch for yourself. Talk about yum…

Banana Coconut Flour Muffins

Serves: 12 muffins
Preparation Time: 10 minutes

Preheat oven at 350 F degrees.

Sift the coconut flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together into a small bowl. Set aside.

In a medium sized bowl beat eggs together. And add butter, coconut oil, milk, honey, sugar and vanilla. Whisk together to blend.

Whisk in coconut flour mixture and bananas until well blended. Batter will be thick. Divide batter among the muffin tins lined with paper liners.

Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

That’s all for now…

Sarah

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Gluten Free Black Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Gluten_free_black_walnut_chocolate_chip_cookies_photo_recipe
Gluten Free Black Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies made with coconut flour

Prepared by Sarah Shilhavy, Photo by Jeremiah Shilhavy

Servings: 22 cookies
Preparation time: 10 minutes

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Over very low heat, melt butter and coconut oil, stirring until melted. Remove from heat and whisk in cocoa powder. Set aside.

In a mixing bowl blend eggs, sugar, vanilla and salt. Whisk in cocoa mixture. Sift in the coconut flour and whisk until there are no lumps. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.

On a cookie sheet greased well with palm shortening, place tablespoon-sized mounds of the dough about an inch apart.

Bake in preheated oven for approximately 14-19 minutes.

Recipe submitted by Gail, Chicago, IL

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Frosted Coconut-Banana Bread

This is a wonderful, gluten-free/casein-free bread. The honey can be cut in half to yield a lighter bread, otherwise it’s very much a cake. Sugar can be substituted (2/3 cup sugar = 1/2 cup honey).

For Bread:

For Frosting:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Using a hand mixer, mash bananas.

2. Add 3 eggs and beat until frothy, 3-5 min.

3. Add honey, oil, baking soda, vanilla, salt, and cinnamon and mix until incorporated, 1-3 minutes.

4. Add coconut flakes and almond meal, and mix well, 1-3 minutes. If using walnuts, add now.

5. Bake for 30 minutes in a casserole dish centered in the oven so the bread will bake evenly. If using mini-cupcake tins bake for 12 min, regular size cupcake tins bake for 20 minutes. This is also great in a loaf pan; bake at 325 F for 40 min or until tester comes out clean.

While the cake is baking, prepare the frosting.

1. Using the hand mixer, mash the bananas.

2. Add the oil, sugar, vanilla and salt and mix until smooth. Set this aside until the bread has cooled, and then frost.

Recipe submitted by Marisa, San Jose, CA

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Hot Cocoa

Hot Cocoa
stock photo

Pour boiling water into a mug and let sit for about 20
seconds. Empty the water and put one tablespoon full of the
virgin coconut oil in it. It melts quickly as you stir in
one tablespoonful of cocoa powder and a pinch of Himalayan
salt. Use a minimum of 1/4 tsp. of whole organic sugar to
cut the bitterness of the cocoa and then add stevia drops to
taste. Usually about 12 drops. Pour boiling water in the cup, stir, and add cream or milk to taste. This makes a great treat very quickly. Other sweeteners can be used.

Florence, Las Vegas, NV

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your recipe here!