My First Coconut Flour Experience

For a while, I’ve been wanting to try coconut flour.

Coconut flour is made from dried, finely ground coconut meat.  It is high in fiber (one serving provides about 1/4 of the recommended amount of fiber each day), gluten and grain free, and low in soluble carbohydrates.  It smells faintly of coconut (not a bad thing in my opinion).

From what I’ve read, recipes using coconut flour require a lot of eggs.  This is because all that fiber absorbs a lot of liquid.  After further research, I learned that it is recommended that each half cup of coconut flour be paired with 6 eggs.  Eggs are so good for you – especially pastured eggs – that this is truly a bonus.

I discovered this ratio after I made my first foray into coconut flour use.  The recipe I used – one for pancakes – only used 4 eggs to a half cup of coconut flour, though it also used a cup of milk.  Still, I found that these pancakes were a little dry, and I could tell they were not made with grain.  They had great flavor, though, and didn’t taste much like coconut at all.  T even thought they were tasty.

I found that I had to add butter to them post-frying to moisten them up; this never happens when I make pancakes with wheat or sprouted wheat flour.  I expect that if I upped the egg amount this would take care of that.  However, the batter would be much looser.  Perhaps then I’d have coconut flour crepes?  Intriguing… I of course added maple syrup because that’s the perfect pairing with pancakes.  That also helped with moisture levels.

I also think incorporating bananas or berries would be a welcome addition and add to the feeling of moistness in the pancakes.

Since coconut flour is so fiber-rich, these pancakes were crazy filling.  I could only – actually, barely – eat two small pancakes. I think next time I’d make a half batch – I had a bunch left over after Sunday’s brunch.

So, although the resulting pancakes did not meet my expectations, I do plan to experiment with this recipe again, and consider other recipes that ask for coconut flour.  Cilantro chicken filled savory coconut flour crepes come to mind right away.  I also might try using coconut flour in brownies, too.  Looking forward to playing more with this new ingredient!