Trial and Error

I like to be creative with recipes when I am cooking. But when it comes to baking, I am clueless and I have to follow each step to a tee. There is so much food science behind baking, which makes creating recipes even harder.

A while ago, I won a $50 Bob's Red Mill gift certificate from a fellow Kentucky food blogger My McDonald Meal. I love Bob's Red Mill, they have so many types of flour that I have never heard of. I thought I would be adventurous with some of their products. I ordered 10 grain flour, rye flour, flaxseed, coconut flour, and buckwheat flour. I was most excited about coconut flour. I have never made gluten-free baked products before, and this was my opportunity.

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Coconut flour has a fragrant toasted smell, it has high fiber and absorbs liquid well. Unlike all-purpose flour, a little bit of coconut flour goes a long way. Therefore up 20% of total flour can be replaced with coconut flour. Since it absorbs liquid well, additional wet ingredients are needed. All coconut flour recipes I looked at require 3 or more eggs, sometimes up to half a dozen. I wanted to create a muffin recipe without using so many eggs.

Here was what I did the first time around: I used this honey muffin recipe as the base of my recipe. I wanted a dozen of muffins, so I doubled the recipe. Instead of adding 3 more eggs, I added 1/4 cup of fat-free yogurt.

My ingredients are:
3 eggs
4 tablespoons melted butter
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup yogurt
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup coconut flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder.

 The batter turned out very moist and after 15 minutes in the oven, the muffins were still soggy.

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For the second time around, I used the same recipe as above but added 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour (hence, not gluten-free anymore) and omit the blueberries. More muffin-like product, but on the chewy and slightly dry side. The coconut flour flavor and honey are still there and taste was good, but the texture was off.

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Back to the drawing board.

I think I am going to use brown rice flour to make this recipe gluten-free. Then use 1/2 cup coconut flour and 3/4 cup brown rice flour. Maybe a couple more tablespoons of milk? One more egg? One more tablespoon of butter? Maybe that was the texture of coconut flour products, but what could I do to make the muffins more fluffy?

The combination is endless, only trial and error will tell.

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