Coconut-Cherry Muffins

When boyfriend and I returned from Thailand, we slept a whole bunch.  For some reason we were just fine when we got to Thailand, well almost fine.  As we walked home from dinner the first night (after sixteen hours on a plane keep in mind!), my body started falling asleep.  My feet would all of a sudden go to bed, while I was trying to walk.  There are some good looking pictures of me, falling asleep at the restaurant.  I nearly fell over at least five times on our way back to the hotel.  Someone kept making fun of me and taking pictures of me as I fell asleep.


Coconut flowers and a sprouting coconut



Look, a baby coconut!

After getting a good nights sleep, we were much better.  It was much easier to walk down the street when my legs were trying to take a nap.  The jet lag wasn't too bad and I'm assuming it was because we were so excited about being in Thailand.


Cooking down coconut syrup

 

Nearly finished coconut sugar

  Returning home was a totally different story.  Jet lag hit us both, hard.  We arrived home after travelling from Phuket to Hong Kong to Vancouver to New York City, in a mere twenty-four hours.  We went from eight-five degrees and high humidity to a snow-covered, below-freezing New York, it was not a pleasant return.  When we finally got back to our apartment, things went well for an hour or two.  We emptied out the suitcases, put a load of laundry in the washing machine and showered.  Then we sat on the couch and turned on some HGTV.  That's when it went downhill as we fell asleep for about four hours, oops.


Palm sugar, cooling into their traditional shape



The bees like palm sugar too!


The first morning of being back in our house we woke up at the completely unnatural hour of four o'clock am.  The rest of the week we kept falling asleep at 9:00 and waking up at 5:00.  I was so proud of us when we stayed up until the evening news on Friday night.  Yup, we're party animals.


Getting the meat out of the coconut



The finished product, coconut oil!

There was one exciting thing about coming home, other than sleeping in my own bed again, packages in the office!  While we were gone I had a few packages arrive in the apartment office.  One was a book, one was a present for boyfriend and the third was from Kelapo!  I was contacted by Kelapo just before we went on vacation about trying some of their virgin coconut oil.  After travelling to Thailand I was even more excited about getting this package in the mail because we visited a coconut farm! 

The pictures you see throughout this post were from the coconut farm, where they made everything from coconut oil, coconut (or palm) sugar, coconut milk and items made from the coconut shell.  The farm smelled wonderful and was full of bees.  At least the bees weren't interested in stinging us, they just wanted to eat the palm sugar.  When I returned home and opened up the Kelapo virgin coconut oil I was transported back to the coconut farm.  Thank you Kelapo, for bringing me back to vacation.

Coconut-Cherry Muffins

A Wilde Original

I think that nothing pairs better with coconut than cherries.  I decided that the perfect use of the Kelapo virgin coconut oil was in a breakfast muffin.  Coconut oil is full of heart healthy fats and can be substituted for butter in almost any recipe.  These muffins are sweet and moist, I like to eat two for breakfast in the morning!

1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

4 tbsp coconut oil

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 egg plus 1 egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla extract

4 ounces greek yogurt

1/2 cup shredded coconut

1/2 cup dark, sweet cherries (I used canned), chopped

Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners and heat the oven to 400 F.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream together coconut oil and sugar until fluffy and smooth.  Add egg, then egg yolk, beating to combine well.  Add Greek yogurt and vanilla extract, followed by coconut.

Slowly add flour mixture to the wet ingredients.  Once everything is combined, add cherries and fold together.  The muffin batter will be thick like cookie dough.

Using a medium ice cream scoop (about 1/4 cup/4 tbsp), fill each muffin cup about 3/4 full.  Bake in the middle of the oven for 18-20 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pan for 4-5 minutes.  Remove and allow muffins to cool completely on a wire rack.  Enjoy that coconut smell and eat!