The Coconut Flour Learning Curve

So Andrew from CarbSmart was here for the weekend; we were talking a bunch of new business ventures, and particularly starting a radio show for me. Exciting stuff! Yesterday morning I made jalapeno jack and avocado omelets, and Andrew posted a photo of his on Twitter. He promised his followers that he'd tweet a picture of this morning's breakfast, too. So I felt it was incumbent upon me to come up with something different, and reasonably photogenic. I decided to make waffles.

Not content with using one of my existing waffle recipes, I decided I had to experiment and come up with something new. I had coconut flour, shredded coconut, and coconut oil all in the house, so triple-coconut waffles seemed like a good idea.

I started with a cup each of coconut flour, coconut, and vanilla whey protein. Added some erythritol, some baking soda, a little salt, and some cinnamon, and stirred to distribute my ingredients evenly. Then I whisked together a cup of plain yogurt, four eggs, and 1/3 cup melted coconut oil and poured it in.

The coconut flour immediately sucked up all the moisture. I couldn't even get all the dry ingredients damp, much less make a batter. I'd read coconut flour had a ton of fiber, and required extra eggs, which is why I'd used four, but four was nowhere near enough.

I added more eggs, another cup of yogurt, a little more baking soda, and baked one waffle. It stuck to the waffle iron, and was pretty dry, and a little bland. I added another 1/3 cup of melted coconut oil, and a couple more tablespoons of erythritol, plus even more eggs. Then it occurred to me that since honey helps keep baked goods moist, some sugar-free imitation honey might do the same thing. I added a tablespoon of that. And another 1/3 cup coconut oil. And some half-and-half, 2/3 cup, to thin it out some more.

Are you keeping count? I wound up with 10 eggs, a whole cup of coconut oil, a cup of yogurt, and 2/3 cup half-and-half.

It finally made pretty decent waffles -- not ready for prime-time, but certainly tasty enough, especially when topped with strawberry compote. (I simmered some unsweetened frozen strawberries I had on hand in a little water, with a touch of lemon juice and several drops of liquid Splenda. When they were soft I mashed them up a bit, and thickened the whole thing with a little glucomannan.)

But talk about overkill! I have a lot of leftover waffles. A whole lot of leftover waffles.

Next time I'd start with half as much coconut flour. It just sucks the moisture out of things -- you should have seen the first batch of cookies I tried to make with it. Or rather, you shouldn't.

I might try, say, 1/3 cup coconut flour, 1/3 cup flax meal, and the vanilla whey and yogurt and eggs and stuff.

But we have to eat the leftover waffles first.