I love Smitten Kitchen.  I usually can’t top anything she does, even though her recipes always turn out fantastic… because they’re always clear, simple, with normal ingredients.  But I have never found any need or reason to improve upon or even just tweak any of her recipes.

But when her Double Coconut muffin recipe came out, I knew I could do her one better.  I offer you, triple coconut muffins.

In addition to the coconut oil and the unsweetened coconut flakes, I also decided to swap in some coconut flour.  Yum.

These muffins actually are rather different from Deb’s.  The unsweetened coconut on top of the unsweetened yogurt means that in the end these muffins aren’t very sweet at all.  But they are delectably moist, and just a touch tangy… which is just my cup of tea.

I also used one of my new favorite discoveries – Traders Point Creamery yogurt, a local yogurt that I have been buying almost exclusively as of late.  It was the only place that I was able to find organic, full fat, and unsweetened yogurt (without having to make my own) for this precious munchkin:

Anyways, this yogurt has barely any cane juice in it for sweetener, and it is full fat, with some mango and banana puree mixed in.  So it added a slightly pina colada tang to the muffins (just barely).  Normally I would just have used regular, but you could also use sweetened vanilla yogurt and end up with sweeter result, if that suits your fancy.

If you wanted to get kind of crazy you could use coconut milk instead of milk and go for Quadruple coconut muffins.  At that point you might just need to go eat a coconut.

Triple Coconut Muffins

Ingredients:
1/2 cup coconut oil
3/4 cup 50/50 proof bread flour (or half whole wheat and half regular)
1/2 cup coconut flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup full fat yogurt, any flavor, although I really believe plain or Greek is best or at least something unsweetened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk or almond milk
1 egg (or two teeny eggs, which is what I used since my farmer delivered extra tiny ones this week)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup shredded coconut, unsweetened, plus more for sprinkling on top

To prepare, heat oven to 375 degrees and grease up a muffin pan.  Set out your yogurt and your egg to come to room temperature.  Heat your coconut oil in a saucepan until barely melted (NOT hot).  Or, if you have an oven with a vent up through one of the burners that gets super hot, like I do, you can just set it in a glass bowl on the burner while the oven preheats and it will melt for you nicely.  All this is necessary because coconut oil liquifies at 76 degrees, so if you whisk a cold egg and yogurt into the oil it will resolidify, making your batter difficult to work with and possibly leaving you with chunks of unevenly distributed coconut oil in your batter.  Some chunks are okay and almost unavoidable (unless you have a super hot kitchen) – you just want the batter to be as even as possible.

Whisk together flours, shredded coconut, baking powder, and salt.  Whisk together yogurt, sugar, milk, egg, vanilla, and coconut oil.  Mix wet ingredients into dry ones until combined.  Pour into muffin tins and sprinkle with a bit more shredded coconut.  Bake 20 minutes.  They will get a touch crispy on the outside but still be incredibly moist on the inside.  And you will love them.