Coconut muffins

Happy new year!

Its almost new year guys, I hope everyone got their hearts desires and if not 2016 is another year, a new beginning and I wish for everyone to have a prosperous one. This year has been filled with a lot of ups and downs, everyone faced challenges, some not as much as others but notwithstanding we should thank God for seeing us through the year. 2016 will be much better by Gods grace.

Anyways I just want to drop this coconut muffin recipe before the year runs out, these are by far the best muffins I have ever made and the best part "its my recipe". we all know muffins are super easy to make so I hope you all try out this recipe

Here's what you need.
2 1/2 cups of flour
1/2 cup + 1 tbsp of white sugar
1/4 cup + 1 tbsp of brown sugar
1/3 cup of vegetable oil
3 teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt.
2 eggs
3/4 cup of coconut milk
About half a cup of streusel. Link to recipe here
1/2 cup of desiccated coconut
Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

 

 

First, pour the desiccated coconut into a bowl and add 1 tablespoon each of brown and white sugar, mix together and set aside.*you can use freshly grated coconut but I'll suggest toasting it in a pan before use*

 Next, whisk all dry ingredients together, these include flour, white sugar, salt, baking powder, set aside.
Next step is to whisk all the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl, i.e milk, eggs, brown sugar, oil.

3/4 cup of coconut milk

1/3 cup of oil

1/4 cup of brown sugar

 

Mix well

Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients

 

 

Whisk together

 

 

 

Batter will be thick

Line a muffin pan with 12 cupcake liners and fill each with about a tablespoon of streusel

Fill with muffin batter

Top with the desiccated coconut mixture that we set aside earlier and place it the oven to bake for 20 minutes. Insert a skewer stick, if it comes out clean then its ready.. if not let them bake for a few more minutes

These babies are so moist, so delicious, like I said before, best muffins I have ever made..Just a reminder Its my recipe..i'm so excited.. 
Anyways, y'all have a wonderful new year and I hope these muffins are part of what you'll make in the new year.
See you guys in 2016 

Streussel topping.

Alas,
I'm finally posting the recipe for the streusel. Its basically just a crumbly topping made of flour, butter and sugar. It can make almost any baked goods taste so much better and it also gives them a sweet crunch.
Lets get to it.
Here's my streusel topping recipe
2 cups of flour
100 grams of butter
Half a cup of white sugar
A quarter cup of brown sugar
1 teaspoon of cinnamon

2 cups of flour

100 grams of butter

1/2 cup white sugar, 1/4 cup brown sugar

 

1 tsp of cinnamon

Add all together

Rub all together with your hands till they look crumbly

Done

 You can keep it in a plastic bag and store in the freezer for future purposes.

Puffys...lol

Hey guys

Have you ever been hungry but not craving real food and you don't feel like going out but you wanna have something simple like a snack, well I think puff puff is the answer.The puff puff sellers usually start frying around evening time but what if I feel like eating it in the morning. Nigerians love puff puff but many of us don't know how easy it is to put together. puff puff is super easy guys, anyone can make it.
Here is my recipe because I have a large family but you can always reduce it by half or double it. whatever you like once you have the basic ingredients..Its just puff puff.

 6 cups of flour
1 Cup of sugar
A dash of nutmeg
2 teaspoons of salt
A tablespoon and half of  instant yeast.
About 3 and 1/2 cups of warm water

Here are the basic ingredients

Add all dry ingredients together

Mix well

Make a well in the middle and add your warm water

Mix well until you have a pretty thick batter, as shown in the video. Then cover and leave to rise in a warm place for about 45 minutes to one hour, just until it has doubled in size.

As you can see my bowl was too small

You should use a bigger bowl so it wont have to rise to the top. Now here's the tricky part..Frying these babies.
Heat up some vegetable oil in a deep fryer or a deep frying pan, you know the oil is ready when you scoop a little and it bubbles back to the top almost immediately. Your oil shouldn't be too hot so they can cook properly but it should be just hot enough so they don't soak too much oil.
Here's how to get them to be round, scoop some of the batter in your hand then squeeze into the hot oil through the hole in between your index finger and thumb...kinda like you're making a fist.

let them fry until they turn golden brown

seee?

yum!

You can see for yourself puff puff = super easy.
Try these at home guys, save yourself the stress of having to walk down to that puff puff vendor or having to queue for these yummy snack.
p.s These are the measuring cups and spoons I use for almost everything. They would make life so much easier. they can be gotten from practically any baker shop and I think they only cost a little over 300 naira.

Coffee kisses

Hey,
How is everyone today?  hopefully not like me, been dealing with a sore throat and a hoarse voice. I'm getting better tho. I might not be well but I still felt like making something, so I grabbed my cook book and looked for the easiest thing I could make.
Then I found the recipe for these super easy coffee cookies called coffee kisses. Then I got up and went to the kitchen, its was so easy to throw together.
Here's all you need
A cup of flour
A quarter cup of icing sugar
125grms of butter
A teaspoon of coffee granules dissolved in half a tablespoon of water, cooled

Here

 

 

First preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius

Measure 125grms of butter.

sift in the icing sugar and cream together until light and fluffy

Add in the cooled coffee and flour

Until it looks like this

Scoop into a piping bag fitted with a medium sized rose tip

Pipe unto a baking tray lined with parchment paper

Bake in the oven for 5 minutes, turn the tray around and bake for another 5 minutes.

Aren't they pretty

I sandwiched them with dark chocolate ganache but you can use melted dark chocolate instead.

They are delicious but I do not recommend them for kids. Grown ups love them tho.

French macaroons

Hey again,

French macaroons?...hmmmm

Guys this is just to share with you my experience with making the delicate cookies known as the french macaroons.
Lemme just start by saying I have tried to make these cookies four times but I failed every single time. My macaroons have never had the signature macaroon "feet", other times, they won't come off the baking sheet. I used four different recipes I got online for the four times I tried.
Although the first time I tried in 2014, I didn't know where to get almonds so I tried using peanuts instead, after mixing and piping (well I didn't really know what I was doing), the point is that the macaroons burned
although as usual my brothers found a way to eat some of them like that.
I felt they burned because I used peanuts so I said I wasn't  going to try them again until I could find almonds.

       Then middle of this year, I found almonds and I tried again, they baked okay tho none of them had feet, some came off, some didn't.. Anyways we ate them and they were delicious they just didn't look like macaroons.
Then I tried again a few weeks later, these were so messy, didn't come off at all , we literally had to scrape them off the baking sheet before we could taste them.

       The fourth time I tried, I had excess cornmeal on my hands so I decided to make macaroons out of that. They came off quite nicely but as usual "no feet" and the cornmeal was too hard.
Well my brothers cleared them tho they didn't like it. *nothing wastes in my house, especially if it has a lot of sugar in it.* Sorry I dont have pictures from any of these fails, I was always too disappointed to even take a picture and I never imagined I was ever going to need them for a blog.

     Anyways, I gave up on macaroon making until the 19th of September when a chef I follow on Instagram (Chef antonio bachour *bachour1234 in-case anybody wants to follow him on IG* ) who makes perfect macaroons all the time posted his macaroons recipe and I quicly screen-grabbed it. He had given me hope again but I decided to be patient this time around so I wont mess it up.
   So I Tried it yesterday, followed the recipe to the letter, tried not to mess anything up and when I opened my oven to take them out and I saw "the feet" I screamed. I was so excited, I started to thank God and chef antonio bachour even tho he couldn't hear me *but I know God could hear me.

I dont really have detailed pictures because I was focusing of how I was going to get them right this time.

According to the recipe, I started out by sifting 125grms of almond meal(i'm sure you guys can make that) together with 150grms of confetioners sugar(Icing sugar).

Almond meal and icing sugar

egg whites

 Then I scaled a hundred grams of egg whites, I got these from almost three medium sized eggs

 Next I whipped my egg whites until foamy, then added 100 grms of granulated sugar 2tbsps at a time
until medium peaks formed. Next i added a few drops of food coloring and mixed it all together.

meringue

 Next, add the sugar and almond meal mixture, then with a rubber spatula, fold everything together. Most recipes ask you to count because you don't want to over-mix or under-mix. The first recipe I tried said 30 folds, I also tried another that said 60-70 folds.
   Chef bachour's recipe didn't specify, it just said to fold everything until smooth and glossy. So I folded and folded until I got the texture below, I didn't count but if I were to guess I must have folded about a hundred times.
The mixture was smooth but not runny.

Like this

 

Here I preheated my oven to 140 degrees. Next I piped them on to a baking tray lined with a parchment paper and a piping bag fitted with half an inch round tip. *piping isn't that neat but you get the point* Let them rest for about 30 minutes to get a hard shell. Then I placed my baking tray on the bottom rack of my oven and I baked them for 6 minutes, the moved them to the top rack and baked for another 6 minutes.

voila... they came out with the feet. 

 When they completely cooled, I sandwiched two together with dark chocolate ganache that I already had in the freezer. you can fill them with all sorts of things e.g buttercream, jam.. whatever you feel like.

I am so so glad I finally got these french macaroons. Now I can move on knowing I know how to make french macaroons.