Coconut Genoise

At my new place of work, Mistral-Kitchen, one of our first desserts has been a Coconut Tres Leches cake (served with diced mango, mango sorbet, and a coconut tuile). A Tres Leches cake is a simple genoise (eggs, sugar, flour only) soaked in milk. Well, actually three milks: milk, cream, and sweetened condensed milk. For a coconut Tres Leches we substituted the cream with coconut milk, as well as added lime zests and some rum. It turns out very nicely.

However, after making the straight-forward genoise, I had the great idea to substitute part of the all purpose flour with some of my coconut flour. I still have some of the coconut flour from the pound I bought and experimented with last summer. This was a fantastic idea, and tasted delicious. All of a sudden the basic, flavorless genoise was worth eating in its own right (maybe a glass of milk on the side still, yet such an improvement from the original!)

Once I soaked the coconut genoise in milk I was able to detect the high fiber content which threw me off in my original experiments with the coconut flour. It gets slightly grainy. But this time, with all the good accompaniments it turned out just fine. Hurrah for coconut genoise! I may have even created a new base for all kinds of coconut desserts. Yum.

Coconut Flour

The other day at PCC I bought Coconut Flour. On the package it mentioned fiber so I immediately saw it as a worthwhile experiment. I also picked up tapioca balls, flour, bananas, and kale. The tapioca was my first exciting new choice. I happen to love tapioca pudding, massive tapioca in bubble tea, but that’s not surprising considering my attachment to puddings without tapioca and tea hot with milk.

Unfortunately I didn’t read the back of the box on all the things meant to be in traditional tapioca pudding. Or maybe it’s good because when I saw coconut milk I decided to use milk and coconut flour, two items I now had in abundance. As you can imagine, the high fiber meant non soluble and I had a grainy, albeit fragrant, pudding with slick, chewy tapioca.

Next time I’m making a very basic and delicious vanilla custard! So there’s no fiber, oh well! There’ll be fat and that should count for something.

Having made that decision I moved to recommended coconut flour recipes. Great – pancakes! That makes sense enough. If one takes into account that very dense, high fiber batters make very dense, high fiber waffles and pancakes. I poured in the allotted amount of buttermilk. Then I poured in more. Then I wondered whether to finish off the container!

Overall I had a very filling, wonderfully scented breakfast, made extra special by buttering with some leftover butter cream frosting. Yes, breakfast may really be the best meal of the day.