Last week at the co-op Adam accidentally grabbed Coconut Manna instead of coconut oil.  It’s made of dried coconut flesh, and it is… heaven on earth on a spoon. But I wasn’t really sure what to cook with it.  I decided to make some simple modifications to the banana muffin recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman (still my favorite cookbook, even though I’m now a former vegetarian).

Here’s another thing to know about the manna — it would be much easier to deal with during the summer.  We keep our thermostat at 66 degrees, almost 10 degrees colder than “ideal spreading temperature” for the manna.  So I had to heat it gently in some hot water, for quite a little while before it reached spreadable consistency:

Coconut Manna Muffins

3 T. melted butter
1 c. all-purpose flour
1 c. whole wheat flour
1/4-1/3 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
3 tsp. baking powder
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 c. whole milk
3/4 c. coconut manna

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease a 12-cup standard muffin tin.

Mix together dry ingredients in a medium size bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together milk, manna, egg, and melted butter.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir until combined.

One thing that made me nervous was the batter got quite thick — thicker than standard muffin batter — due to the manna thickening when it cooled in the cold milk. But not to worry. Spoon into muffin tins and bake at 400 for about 20 minutes.  Makes 12 good sized muffins.

These turned out great. Moist, just coconutty enough without being overwhelming.  With the amount of whole wheat flour in them, I was really happy with how moist they were.

And wow, just stumbled upon a whole collection of delicious coconut manna recipes.