Remember the banana coconut muffins?
They might still be my favorite muffin of all time.
These blueberry coconut muffins are a very close second. I don’t love blueberries quite as much as bananas — obviously, since blueberries are full of antioxidants and that breaks my personal rules — but the blueberry-coconut pairing is seriously delicious.
It’s impossible to stop at just one — look at them!
On a different note, my mom told me a story about Mother Lovett the other weekend. After starting her first job she gained a few pounds and tried every trick she could find to lose them. I’m pretty sure this was around the same time she attempted the cabbage soup diet and spent a lot of time running to the bathroom between classes.
One day Mother Lovett clipped a cartoon from the paper that read, “If you want to lose weight, keep your mouth shut,” and placed it on her dresser to remind herself every day. It worked.
That anecdote fits her perfectly. She saw the world in very black-and-white terms. For example, she once wrote the Democrat candidate’s name on a Republican absentee ballot during a primary — for a local county commissioner in a town smaller than my shoe collection. She also insisted on reading the PennySaver from cover to cover but always called it the “Penny Loafer,” convinced she was right.
No gray areas with her.
These muffins wouldn’t have made Mother Lovett’s top list because they don’t include butter — and she used more butter than I thought humanly possible. She also didn’t do what most people call exercise, unless climbing 10-foot ladders and shoveling steep driveways in her eighties counts. We used to call it a death wish.
Loaded Blueberry Coconut Muffins
1 1/2 cups all-purpose or whole wheat pastry flour (I used a half-and-half mix)
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cup coconut oil, liquid
1 egg
1/4–1/2 cup coconut milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup shredded coconut
3/4 cup blueberries
Preheat oven to 400°F.
In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, and baking powder. Add the coconut oil, coconut milk, vanilla, and egg, stirring until just combined. Fold in the shredded coconut and blueberries. Sprinkle the tops with raw turbinado sugar if desired.
Bake for 15–20 minutes, or until golden brown. Finish with a dusting of powdered sugar glaze, a smear of coconut butter, and toasted coconut if you like.
I call these “loaded” because I pile in a generous amount of shredded coconut and blueberries. I may be dramatic, but in this case the extra fruit and coconut only make them better — and tastier.