Every Easter I see these pretty speckled robin’s egg cakes pop up all over the food internet, and I’ve been wanting to make one myself for a while. I’ve also been wanting to make a coconut layer cake, so I combined the two and here we are!
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Coconut Lime Cupcakes with Raspberry Jam and 7(ish)-Minute Frosting
You know when you volunteer to bring treats to work, and instead of making it easy on yourself and preparing the various components of said treat over a few days, you procrastinate and something inevitably takes longer than it should and you end up frosting cupcakes at 11 pm with your kitchen looking like this? (Is this just me?)
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Daring Bakers: Lamingtons
For the May challenge Marcellina from Marcellina in Cucina dared us to make Lamingtons, an Australian delicacy that is as tasty as it is elegant.
The story goes that these little treats came about after a serving maid dropped some squares of sponge cake in chocolate icing, and her boss, Lord Lamington, Governor of Queensland, suggested that rather than throwing them out, she roll them in coconut “to avoid sticky fingers”. I’m not entirely sure that this story is water-tight, however, as the Lamington is also claimed by New Zealand and is known as cupavci in Bosnia. But regardless of who came up with them, they are a good idea.
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Daring Bakers: Asian Coconut Custard Buns
The February Daring Bakers’ challenge is hosted by Julie of One-Wall Kitchen. She challenged us to an easy, simple filled bun using no-knead dough.
This month’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge recipe is known by many names – bao, mantou, nikuman, siopao and others – but the common denominator is that is it an Asian-style bun, stuffed with a filling (often Chinese bbq pork) and baked. At first I wasn’t too excited because I had so recently made the steamed version of this recipe with the Sourdough Surprises group, but then I remembered Suz’s custard-filled steamed buns, and suddenly I knew that I wanted to make a baked version.
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Blackberry Lime Coconut Macaroon Bars
Blackberries are a sure sign of summer to me. I usually go berry picking towards the end of August, but all the sunny hot weather we had in July means that the earliest berries are ripe, so over the weekend I was out with my bucket, lurking in the neighbourhood ditches, picking blackberries. The berries right now are still quite small, with a good tart pucker to go with their sweetness, and if the unripe berries on the bushes are anything to go by, it’s going to be a great blackberry year.
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Coconut Oat and Date Cookies
I have a new favorite ingredient: dates.
I discovered them first in this totally amazing raw brownie recipe (seriously, they are awesome brownies, raw or otherwise) and I was basically flabbergasted that you could make something that tastes this good out of nothing but pulverized nuts, dates, and cocoa powder.
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Maple Coconut Pumpkin Pie with Spelt Shortbread Crust
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! I still can’t believe it’s October and, according to all the store displays and lifestyle/cooking magazines, the beginning of the holiday season. Where the heck did summer go so quickly?
I’m enjoying fall though – I love the cooler weather, the coloured leaves, and the abundance of delicious, harvest food – and maybe I’m okay with the holiday season starting. Heck, I’ve bought my first holiday cooking magazine and I’m already thinking about Christmas baking. Yeah, I’m totally okay with it ;). For me it’s mostly about the food anyway, and a Thanksgiving meal is a great way to kick it all off.
I’ve been in charge of holiday desserts in my family ever since I can remember, so this is the pumpkin pie I took to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner. By the way, my mum is a turkey super-star – it is always juicy and awesome. And it has bacon on it. That’s all you really need to know.
The real turkey bacon
Anyway, back to pie. This recipe comes from my trusted friend Martha, and this is the second year I’ve made it. What sets it apart from other pumpkin pie recipes is the crust, which comes out tasting more like a shortbread cookie than regular pie pastry. Rather than rolling out the pastry, you just press the crust right into the pie plate and then blind bake it. 
This is definitely the easiest and best recipe/method I have come across for blind-baked pastry, because it doesn’t shrink or bubble up like other pastry often does.
The pumpkin filling, while quite tasty and nicely spiced, was not particularly special or unique as far as I could tell the last time I made it, so I cut out the regular white sugar and used maple syrup and brown sugar instead. 
I also added a splash of maple syrup to the whipped cream – because what’s pumpkin pie without whipped cream?
Because my mum can’t eat wheat or dairy, I used whole spelt flour in the crust and coconut milk instead of cream in the pumpkin custard filling (she missed out on the maple whipped cream though – next year I might try this coconut whipped cream recipe). The spelt flour gives the crust a slightly toasted flavour, and the coconut milk (which might sound weird) actually pairs really well with the pumpkin, maple, and spices. You can substitute heavy cream if you want, but I would recommend trying it with coconut milk even if you don’t have a dairy allergy!
Maple Coconut Pumpkin Pie with Spelt Shortbread Crust
Modified from Martha Stewart; makes one 9-inch pie
Spelt Shortbread Crust
A note on baking with spelt: spelt flour is a cousin of wheat flour, but is lower in gluten so it behaves a little differently in baking – basically, it absorbs less liquid and often turns out a bit crumblier. I usually think of it as similar to cake and pastry flour, but I’m not sure how accurate that actually is. In most cases, to substitute spelt for wheat flour, just increase the amount of flour by 25% (or, you can decrease the amount of liquid by 25%, but this sometimes also decreases the volume of whatever you’re making, so I usually go with the other method). However in this recipe, because there is no liquid added to the crust, a straight one-to-one substitution works.
Preheat oven to 375˚F.
In a bowl, cream together:
4 tbsp unsalted butter or margarine, softened (I used dairy-free margarine to accommodate a dairy allergy)
3 tbsp white granulated sugar
Stir in:
1 large egg yolk
Add:
1 cup whole spelt flour (or all purpose wheat flour, or 1/2 cup each all purpose and whole wheat flours)
1 tsp coarse salt
Stir until the mixture is uniformly crumbly – it should clump together easily when squeezed between your fingers. Press it evenly into the bottom and just over an inch up the sides of a 9-inch pie plate. Freeze until firm (20 minutes – I forgot to do this and it turned out fine), then bake in a 375˚F oven for 15-20 minutes, rotating half-way through, until golden brown. Let cool while you prepare the pumpkin filling.
Maple Coconut Pumpkin Filling
Preheat oven to 325˚F.
In a medium bowl, whisk together until smooth:
1 14-0z/398 ml can pure pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
3/4 cup coconut milk with a high fat content (ie, not light – the one I used had 14 grams of fat per 1/3 cup – and make sure you shake the can well)
1/3 cup pure maple syrup (the darker the better – darker = more flavour)
2 eggs, beaten slightly
2 tbsp dark brown sugar (demerrara if you can find it)
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
Pour the filling into the prepared pie crust. Bake the pie at 325˚F for 65-70 minutes, until the filling is slightly puffy and just set (it should still jiggle a bit). Cool completely on a wire rack, then refrigerate, uncovered, for at least 6 hours. Serve with maple whipped cream (1 cup whipping cream + 1 tbsp maple syrup).
Churched-up Marshmallow Cereal Bars with Coconut and Pecans
I was looking through my baking cupboard yesterday and realized I had all of the necessary ingredients for these bars on hand: leftovers from a massive bag of marshmallows from a class camping trip, shredded coconut from making granola, pecans, and cereal. This morning when I actually pulled everything out and started to measure, however, I discovered that I didn’t have quite enough of anything. *Sigh*. By that point I was committed to making them, so half an hour and one trip to the store later, I *actually* had all of the necessary ingredients on hand and in the right amounts!
This recipe is courtesy of my trusted friend Martha, with a few tweaks by yours truly. They are essentially Rice Krispie Squares (cereal mixed with melted marshmallows and butter), however they are “churched-up” by the addition of toasted coconut and pecans. Originally the recipe called for cornflakes, but the first time I made them I used Kellog’s Just Right cereal, which has corn flakes, puffed rice, and toasted oats. They turned out really well and I have never made them with anything else. I also added vanilla, because everything is better with vanilla, right? Especially marshmallows!
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Easy Coconut Rice
About 5 years ago, I had a meal at a restaurant in California that served up a mean coconut rice. It was creamy and delicious and delicately flavoured, and this is my attempt to duplicate it. Admittedly, I can’t remember with great certainty exactly what the rice at that restaurant tasted like, so I don’t really have anything to compare to, but this tastes pretty good and is super easy to make. I add a touch of brown sugar and a drop of vanilla for a little extra perfume and flavour, and if you want to get fancy, you can stir in some toasted coconut after cooking. This is great served with stirfries or curries, and is especially good beside meat grilled with sweet chili sauce.
Just be careful not to let the rice and coconut milk boil over, or your stove will look like this:
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“Healthy Cookies”
I made some fantastic “Healthy Cookies” from 101 Cookbooks, a food blog that features whole, healthy foods, delicious recipes, and an emphasis on alternative sweeteners rather than refined sugar. This cookie recipe calls for coconut oil, which might send up red flags for some people because it is a saturated fat, but it is from a plant-source rather than an animal-source, and therefore acts differently in the body (ie, not as harmful). My take on it is this: in tropical cultures that eat a traditional diet high in saturated fats from plants, such as coconut oil, there is a very low incidence of “Western diseases” (cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, etc). Mother Nature knows her stuff, and coconut oil is a naturally-occurring saturated fat – that is, not tampered with to make a liquid fat stay solid at room temperature (like margarine) – and therefore I’m inclined to think that it’s not going to do me any harm in moderation, kind of the same stance I have on butter. But if you’re worried, you can substitute olive oil for the coconut oil – just make sure it is mild or neutral-flavoured.
I also used sugar-free chocolate chips (sweetened with maltitol, which interestingly has almost the same chemical properties as refined sugar, but doesn’t mess with blood sugar levels as much AND as a bonus doesn’t promote tooth decay!) and added some ground flax seeds to the dough. The bananas can easily be substituted for applesauce or any other fruit puree (you don’t actually taste the banana, it just lends sweetness), and the chocolate chips for dried fruit (if, for example, you wanted to make breakfast cookies, Lynette!). These are super delicious and not too sweet, with kind of a macaroon-like texture. I think I ate about four in a row when they first came out of the oven, which kind of negates the “healthy” part, but oh well!
Healthy Cookies
(adapted slightly from the original recipe at 101 Cookbooks)
3 large, ripe bananas (the ones you would use for banana bread), well mashed (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup coconut oil, barely warm – so it isn’t solid (or alternately, neutral-flavoured olive oil)
2 cups rolled oats
2/3 cup almond meal (aka ground almonds)
1/3 cup coconut, finely shredded & unsweetened
2 tbsp ground flax seeds
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350˚ F. Mix together bananas, vanilla, and oil, then add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Drop by teaspoonfuls (you may need to squish the dough together a bit, as it is fairly loose) onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and bake for 12-14 minutes (as long as possible without burning the bottoms). These are quite crumbly when warm! Let cool and store in an airtight container.