Chalk & Chi: Top 2 Tips to Baking with Coconut

Just two. Why? Because I've only come across two major issues that'll mess up your final product and cause you baking aggravation!

Coconut Flour: Fluffy magic stuff...if used wisely! I just made fantastic blueberry muffins and they came out so light and fluffy, not at all dense or crumbly. The primary complaint I hear from folks on Paleo is how their various baked recipes came out crumbly or weird. So here we go with...

Coconut Tip #1

SIFT, SIFT, SIFT! Whatever amount the recipe calls for, let's say 1/3 cup, I will measure a scant 1/3 cup and then sift the flour. If you skip this step and just break the clumps with a fork, or whisk the flour and say, "that's good enough" it never will come out right. Take the extra 30 seconds and get out the mesh sieve/strainer. Place it over the mixing bowl for the dry ingredients, dump in the coconut flour and run a spoon through it. Voila! Light and fluffy baked goods!

Next major baking with coconut issue involves temperature discrepancies. Usually a recipe will call for dry ingredients and then wet, which you typically mix in a separate bowl and then you incorporate the wet into the dry. A sample recipe of wet ingredients will read thusly:

4 eggs
1/4 cup melted coconut oil
1/2 tsp Vanilla
1Tbsp orange zest

Trouble is that three of the four kids will play in the pool nicely together. The fourth (melted coconut oil) is a misunderstood child ESPECIALLY if confronted with chilly eggs fresh from the fridge! The coconut oil will seize up into aggravating clumpies that you will desperately try to whisk out. Joke's on you if you go this way. You can drive yourself crazy & ruin your eggs by whisking OR you'll get clever and put the metal mixing bowl in the heated oven and warm it just enough to melt your oil. You risk cooking your eggs though. If you haven't noticed by now, this is all a GINORMOUS pain in the rear. So this leads us to:

Coconut Tip #2

Melted coconut oil is last but not least. Mix your dry. Mix your wet. Mix the wet into the dry THEN drizzle your melted coconut oil in. If you're following a recipe by someone that has their act together they WILL specify this. Wether or not we actually read this instructional part is a different story. We're all old dogs used to using butter or canola oil which isn't as temperature sensitive. So now that everyone is playing nice in the pool together, you are saved from separated or cooked eggs and a whole lot of feeling like, "F*#¥ it I'm just going to buy Betty Crocker!"