Expensive Coconut Flour Going to Waste!

May 27, 2012 8:33 PM

I got suckered into buying coconut flour; now I'm moving in four weeks and want to use it up. What can I make with this stuff?

I made some pancake recipe I found on a bodybuilder forum and it was pretty horrible. I'm trying to lose weight and I'm hitting the gym for weightlifting and cardio, and counting calories, so less desserty recipes are especially appreciated. I know there are some brainy foodies around here so help me not waste what was a neat splurge! (Primarily this has to taste good, or I won't eat it, so load me up on dessert recipes too, if that's whatcha got. I do splash out on some refined carbs every fourth day or so, keeping within my high calorie day limit).

posted by thelastcamel to food & drink (8 answers total)

I can't find the recipe, but. Have had some very good coconut flour muffins.
posted by bq at 8:51 PM on May 27, 2012

These both work for breakfast or dessert or snacks or what have you:

Pumpkin Nut Muffins from Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint

I make cherry clafouti using coconut flour. I haven't found an ideal recipe yet, but this one from $5 dish is pretty good. Note: I've never had a clafouti other than the gluten-free ones I've made myself, so maybe it's a terrible clafouti -- but it's a fine dish, whatever it is.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:23 PM on May 27, 2012

Use it as a base/thickener in curries. None of the coconut taste will come through in the finished dish, unless you really skimp on spices.
posted by Kandarp Von Bontee at 9:44 PM on May 27, 2012

It's nice as a breading for chicken or fish, too. Mix with spices and then sear or roast.
posted by judith at 9:57 PM on May 27, 2012

I just made the pancake recipe here on Nom Nom Paleo, and they were surprisingly good. Everyone in my family tried them (all heavily skeptical) and everyone was surprised.

The part that made no sense to me before I started, was that the recipe calls for 1 TBSP of coconut flour. I thought this was a type, and almost changed it on the fly. But the recipe is right. Apparently coconut flour absorbs moisture far more readily than other flours, so you can't just easily substitute it in. The only other things I changed were a different brand of coconut milk and I used butter to fry the pancakes. They were great.

That website has several other recipes using Coconut flour, but that is the only one I have made so far.

I bet you could make a really amazing batter for fried shrimp with that.

One other caveat: since going to a paleo diet, I have found that super heavy coconutty things like these pancakes and coconut ice cream seems to really bother my stomach much later on. I'm not sure if it is the high fat content, the high fiber content, or what, but after tanking a bunch of coconut milk ice cream (which was amazing) I was hurting in the stomach much later on. I would just recommend a bit of caution before you try and down a few dozen muffins if you are trying to eat all this in the next few weeks.
posted by This_Will_Be_Good at 11:47 PM on May 27, 2012

I think the stomach thing is because it is so high fiber. You can't eat a lot in one sitting. But coconut flour is actually not bad if you put it in the right dish.

The best thing I've made with it so far would probably be banana bread with chocolate chips (using a recipe like this one, although I can't vouch for this one specifically). Make sure you use a recipe that is designed for coconut flour instead of trying to substitute it in, so that the recipe will have enough liquid ingredients to balance out the flour.

I think the thing with coconut flour is that it's very drying and it soaks up anything you add to it, so something like banana bread is perfect because it's made to be very moist and balances out the flour, plus you can serve it with something like cream cheese on it, and banana and chocolate and coconut flavor (slight) go pretty well together.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 12:42 AM on May 28, 2012

It's used quite a bit in gluten free cooking, although then you often combine it with other GF flours like sorghum, rice or tapioca, so that might not help you out.

I like to use it in making coconut cream bars as well, though. Replace about 1/3 the flour with coconut flour: Coconut custard bars
posted by lyra4 at 2:55 AM on May 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

These all look like great ideas! Thanks guys. If the mods can leave the thread open for three weeks I'll make some of the recipes and report back on what I've made and how the things turned out.
posted by thelastcamel at 8:43 PM on May 29, 2012