Mango Coconut Oatmeal Muffins
First draft is here.
First draft:
1 cup all-purpose flour (I used unbleached)
2 Tbsp dark brown sugar (made from scratch in our house)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2/3 rolled oats
1/3 quick oats
1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut
~1 cup of coconut cream (put a can of coconut milk in the fridge overnight, scoop out and use the solids)
1 egg
1/4 cup coconut oil
1 large mango (peeled from its pith and pureed)
1/2 cup honey (I Think we've got Tupelo in the house, right now)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Pre-heat oven to 400 F.
In a large bowl, whisk flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, rolled oats, quick oats and shredded coconut.
In a mixing bowl, whip coconut cream, egg, coconut oil, mango puree, honey and vanilla extract.
Make a hollow in the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ones. Using a cooking spoon, gently fold together the wet and dry ingredients. (Do NOT over-mix; it's okay to have a few small dry lumps.)
Grease a muffin pan with coconut oil.
Pour muffin batter into muffin pan cups about 1/3 cup at a time. Distribute any remainding batter among the cups evenly.
Bake (at 400 F) for 17 minutes. Toothpick test; cook a little longer, if necessary.
Cool before eating.
Results analysis and alterations research:
First draft:
1 cup all-purpose flour (I used unbleached)
2 Tbsp dark brown sugar (made from scratch in our house)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2/3 rolled oats
1/3 quick oats
1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut
~1 cup of coconut cream (put a can of coconut milk in the fridge overnight, scoop out and use the solids)
1 egg
1/4 cup coconut oil
1 large mango (peeled from its pith and pureed)
1/2 cup honey (I Think we've got Tupelo in the house, right now)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Pre-heat oven to 400 F.
In a large bowl, whisk flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, rolled oats, quick oats and shredded coconut.
In a mixing bowl, whip coconut cream, egg, coconut oil, mango puree, honey and vanilla extract.
Make a hollow in the dry ingredients and pour in the wet ones. Using a cooking spoon, gently fold together the wet and dry ingredients. (Do NOT over-mix; it's okay to have a few small dry lumps.)
Grease a muffin pan with coconut oil.
Pour muffin batter into muffin pan cups about 1/3 cup at a time. Distribute any remainding batter among the cups evenly.
Bake (at 400 F) for 17 minutes. Toothpick test; cook a little longer, if necessary.
Cool before eating.
Results analysis and alterations research:
- Edges are too brown. Next batch, cook on a quarter sheet pan and include a cup of water in oven. Maybe just add a thin layer of water to the quarter sheet pan. (Supposedly, cooking muffins in a lighter colored aluminum pan helps, too, but I don't have one of those.) Could also try cupcake papers, but I don't like making muffins in cupcake papers - they're messy and they pull apart weirdly from the muffin when you try to eat it.
- Bottoms were slightly underdone, as in, a wetness was present. Aggravating, because I had an overcooked outside and a very slightly undercooked inside at the bottom. Completely cooled muffins were a bit better, but I let them cool in the pan in hopes that the residual heat would finish the inside. The quarter sheet / water trick might help - I had to pull them out of the oven at 17 minutes because they were obviously done around the edges, and a toothpick came out clean. The test muffins I tried were a little moist-er at the bottoms, like the wet ingredients fell.
- Sugars were pretty good. Honey was a good choice. Molasses (in the brown sugar) supported the mango nicely.
- Could try not using coconut oil next time - there's plenty of fat in the coconut milk solids.
- Might try this with pineapple instead of mango. The mango I used was just okay; I think a really good mango would taste better, you almost need a super-mango-y mango so that its taste is at the forefront of the end result.
- Things learned: baking soda uses the acidity in the other ingredients to make the muffins rise, and baking powder helps low acidity baked goods to rise.