Adventures In Baking With Coconut Flour: Paleo Lavender Cupcakes

Oh paleo. I have a love hate with the trend that is said cave-man diet. I don’t usually go out of my way to eat, cook or bake paleo. This cupcake creation just happened to turn out best paleo style, so there.

Anyone who’s dabbled, experimented and perhaps mastered in gluten-free baking knows that it’s a whole new learning curve. Even for a seasoned baker – such as myself, it was as though I had to begin all over again. Since baking is a science, this makes sense. While I’ve discovered that my favourite gluten-free baking flour is a blend of almond, coconut, white bean and chick-pea flour – I was in a rush to make these beauties for my little girl’s 2nd birthday party and just didn’t have the time.

So. I threw caution to the wind and stopped fighting against a mental block I’ve been having for a while now. That being the amount of liquid; in particular EGGS, that one should use when baking strictly with coconut flour. I just couldn’t get over the obscene amount of eggs I was always coming up against in recipe research and development. So I bucked and have had many failed attempts at baking with coconut flour on it’s own and became a lover of blended flours. Until last weekend.

I was in a rush and didn’t have time to agonize over the thought of my daughter’s birthday cupcakes not turning out. I vowed to myself that they would be the most delicious cupcakes ever and took 1 PLUS dozen out of the fridge to set on the counter. (TIP: I always take out my eggs about 20 minutes prior to working with them in baking a recipe. Room temperature eggs just do their eggy thing better. I know, SO technical, right?)

Why am I hurting my brain in baking gluten-free? A couple of our very good friends eat g-free and now more recently, my mom has been diagnosed celiac. Plus, why not? While gluten surely isn’t the devil, baked goods loaded with white flour and tons of sugar isn’t the healthiest.

The hot pink and turquoise icing you see? SO not paleo. Chock full of whipping cream, cream cheese and a wee bit of icing sugar as it was out of my hands by then. Or else I would have been in there with maple syrup or honey because white sugar IS THE DEVIL. At any rate, coconut cream icing would be the ultimate paleo, vegan, sugar-free icing recipe (that actually tastes good), which one could typically use but I didn’t have any arrowroot. So my friend came to the rescue with her well-loved and delectably light, fluffy and mildly sweet cream cheese whipped icing.

Before we get ahead of ourselves however – let’s get on with this cupcake business first shall we?  (Printable / PDF recipe card at the end!)

What You’ll Need:

Told you there’s a lot of eggy business going on. Don’t skimp here. Makes or breaks the recipe – if’n you’ll pardon the pun.

STEP #1
Preheat oven to 350 F. Crack all those egg-whites nice and careful. I’m a fan of the directly in the hand yolk action. Delicate situation. Set aside. Measure all of the dry ingredients; coconut flour, coconut sugar, baking soda and a dash of sea salt (forgot that in my listy). Pour into a large mixing bowl.

STEP #2
Crack all non-white eggy required egg business (all 10 of them) into a medium sized bowl. In a separate vessel measure out the coconut milk and hand blend until creamy. Pour that into the bowl of eggs and add in the lavender and almond extracts topping the mixture off with the egg whites. Whisk by hand until evenly blended and frothy. Add the wet to the dry, mixing until well and thick. Notice how it’s still runny? Walk away for 10 minutes. It’s like magic! Coconut flour is like a sponge. It soaks up liquid at an alarming rate (hence all of the eggs and coconut milk and so little coconut flour), actually expanding in volume after left alone for a bit. Now that you are all amazed by baking science and stuff, mix the batter well once again.

STEP #3
Line your baking trays with cups if you so desire and pour the batter to the brim. Lightly drop/bang and jiggle the pans on the stove to even things out a bit. Slide into the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes depending on your oven. Until the tops are springy and firm to the touch!

STEP #4
If you’re feeling fancy (which I was since these were for my daughter’s birthday), whip up some dandy cupcake toppers. Washi tap and fabric tape is my favourite new discovery for doing this. For these little Mad Hatter, Alice In Wonderland themed cupcakes, I went with fabric tap. Click here to get the full DIY! If you aren’t making toppers, now’s about the time that one would get on the icing action.

STEP #5
After removing the cupcakes from the oven, let them sit on a counter for about 10 minutes and remove them from the baking tray. Let them sit for another 10 minutes or so till they aren’t warm anymore. If you’re not going to make the vegan, paleo coconut cream icing I linked up there, my friend Jen’s icing is how we went. (After two failed attempts of my own in making butter cream icing. HUMIDITY. I DESPISE THEE.) In Jen’s words, “1 package of room temperature cream cheese, creamed with 1/3 (to taste) of icing sugar, 1 tsp of vanilla, 1 pint of whipping cream.” She whipped that action up, adding in some dye of choice and my mom dolloped all of the cupcakes and inserted all of the toppers for me while I had a shower 2.5 minutes before the birthday party guests started arriving.

Baby, toddler, kid and teenager approved. Adults too.

 Until the next. XO