Coconut Muffins

2 cups flour

1 tbsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 stick butter

1 large egg

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup sweetened coconut

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Melt the stick of butter, allowing it to cool afterwards but do not let it coagulate again.  Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl.  In a separate bowl, beat the egg. Add in the sugar, milk and vanilla. Mix well.  Line your muffin pan.

Add the melted butter slowly to the egg mixture. You do not want it too warm or it will cook the egg. You also only want to add a little at a time, mix, add some more, mix and keep going until it's all in. Now add it to the dry ingredients you set aside and mix.  Do not over-mix. Lumpy is good!  Add 1/4 cup of coconut and mix.  Add the mixture to muffin pan. Fill almost to the top of the liner. Set aside when all are topped up.

Now, in a small sauce pan, add the other 1/4 cup of coconut. Turn the heat to med-high and keep stirring the coconut over the heat until it is lightly golden.  When it is golden, remove from heat. 

Using a small spoon, add some 'toasted' coconut across the top of the muffins. It gives a streusel-like topping.  Now pop those bad boys in the oven and bake until the toothpick comes clean, or approximately 20-25 minutes, depending on your oven.

*Please note: The mixture is a basic muffin mix. If you want blueberry or some other flavor, just replace the first batch of coconut with desired flavor. Then omit the last step of toasting coconut. You can have any kind of muffin you want with this mix.*

Comments:  I found this recipe on a site titled Freda's Voice and since it contains coconut I had to give it a try.  Love it!  I did make a couple of changes.  The original recipe above called for 1 cup of milk and I used Almond Coconut Milk which is thicker than regular milk so I added an extra 1/4 cup (1 1/4 total).  I also used the full half cup of coconut in the batter and toasted another 1/4 cup for the topping.  One mistake I made was to toast the coconut too long.  Let the coconut get barely tanned because it will darken while baking.  In fact, I will probably not toast my coconut topping at all the next time, letting the oven do it for me.  These muffins are not super sweet making them really appealing to me.  And as you can see from the note above, you can actually use this recipe for just about any kind of muffins.

Comment form Food Tester Carol:  Martha, when you brought over these coconut muffins, we were so excited!  There is nothing like toasted coconut and we dove into them!  This must be an "old-fashioned" recipe because it is so pleasingly simple and the coconut permeates everything.  It reminds us too, of a coconut pie with toasted coconut on top that some of the ladies in mother's church make for the harvest picnic (and we all stand in line for even a sliver!)."