Coconut Flour and Prom Week

Recently I was asked if I had ever worked with coconut flour.  I hadn't, but knowing that it is something I wanted to learn I decided to go for it this week.  I had a get together where the lady that asked me was going to attend so I thought it would be a good thing to make some cookies to take along.  After doing some research and stopping at several places looking for coconut flour - I live among the poor folks without a Whole Foods store nearby, I finally came up with trying Coconut Almond cookies.  It also happened to be prom week for my daughter.  It was her last one and
while I'm sad about that, the amount of effort that goes into that one event is amazing!  It always seems to be the case, too, that when you have the most to do in a week is when even more comes up.  I do a monthly birthday celebration cake for the local Women's shelter - that was this week, I run a non-profit for birthday cakes for under privileged children - that had the most requests ever this week and after 18 years it was the last session of pictures for dance class (I started taking my older daughter in 1994 and then my youngest started as soon as she turned 3!).  So not only a busy week, but a bit emotional too. 

My SuperSuit has just enough stretch in it that I was able to get everything accomplished surprisingly.  I took a little grief for having to wear my reading glasses to help with a seam on the prom dress but other than that I think I'm holding up pretty well :) 

But getting back to the cookies, it worked out perfectly that I have been studying my "I'm just here for more food" book to know why coconut flour requires so many more eggs to work with it.  There is no gluten in it and it needs a helper for a binding agent.  The eggs also helped the cookies to have a more "cake" like texture once they were baked.  Before that I wasn't sure what they would be like.

The batter was very "eggy" but leaving it for about 5 minutes to sit helped it to bind up.  I'm not much of a flaked coconut person - it's the texture I think - so when I first looked at the recipe I thought "maybe I'll omit the coconut flakes" but they needed to be there for the "bulk"  otherwise there wouldn't have been any substance to them.  But they tasted better than I expected and the shavings seemed to have soaked up the moisture (I'm guessing) because they weren't as hard as in a coconut macaroon cookie.  They turned out very cakey, moist and delicious.  I was impressed.  It was a great experiment and step in the right direction for making desserts that are better for our bodies.  I have quite a bit of the flour left over too so I'm going to try a few other things I think as time goes by.  But I'm through the first part of Alton's book that explains all the science and I'm ready for the "Muffin Method" . . . but that's my next post.