I love to challenge myself to just make things out of what I have in the cupboard. It didn’t take long to partner up juicy pineapple, coconut cream and shredded coconut for a dreamy tropical Sunday afternoon treat.
Back in the kitchen, hurrah! The renovations are finally over and I have an oven and running water. Bliss. One should not understate the value of simple things. I’m now in the process of tidying out my make-shift pantry (which has consisted of rows of boxes in the hallway for the past 11 weeks). It’s almost like Christmas. Rediscovering tins and packets I had completely forgotten about, my ‘waste not, want not’ hat firmly upon my head, I look forward to cooking up a storm out of anything I can find.
Tinned fruit always gets a little forgotten in my house and rightly so. We have such an abundance of fresh fruit, tinned hardly gets a look in. It is my ‘go to’ rescue food in case of a miserable weekend where baking calls my name but the weather outside tells me not to venture to the store for ingredients.
Today, tinned pineapple, coconut cream, shredded coconut peered out from the box looking very unloved. Clocked. It was too early for a cocktail but seemed like a perfect trio for a muffin!
I was delightfully not disappointed. The combination of coconut cream and yoghurt made for a very light batter resulting in a moist muffin.
While the recipe could easily call for a tin of diced pineapple chunks, I roughly pureed mine. One tin pureed down perfectly to one cup.
Pineapple Coconut Muffins
Makes 12-14
Ingredients
- 100g butter, softened
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 egg
- 1 cup coconut cream
- 1/2 cut unsweetened yoghurt
- 1 cup shredded coconut
- 1.5 cups of plain flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 cup pineapple puree
- 1/4 cup shredded coconut, to sprinkle
Method
- Preheat oven to 200°C.
- Line 12-cup muffin pan with liners or use a non-stick silicone alternative.
- Whisk softened butter and sugar together until creamy, then add salt and egg and whisk.
- Add coconut cream and yoghurt and whisk again. Once nice and blended, fold in the coconut, sifted flour and baking powder. Don’t over-mix and the muffins will be beautiful and light.
- Finally fold through pineapple puree.
- Bake for 20-25 minutes until firm to touch and skewer comes out clean when poked into the muffin.
- Allow to cool for 5 minutes before removing from muffin pan.
It was only after the oven’s timer pinged, that the thought rum essence sprung to mind: this could in fact be the perfect Pina Colada Muffin. Ahhh, perhaps I will experiment with that on another rainy weekend.
