Coconut-Blueberry Muffins

It is after coming to Germany, that I absolutely developed an interest towards baking. There are many reasons behind how and why I developed this interest. But, the main one is my own self-pity. Do you want to know why?? Here is my sad story. Those who do not want to read through, just skip the next two paragraphs.

Tortoise coil rolls!! Flashback.

When I was a child, I was fond of eggs. I used to enjoy this healthy food in every form - as omelette, boiled eggs, bull's eye, scrambled eggs, egg curry, cakes, macarons, etc, etc.... As I grew up, sometimes, after meals, I had a strange kind of stomach pain. After about one and half years of treatment for ulcers, etc. it didn't subside and I opted for my own judgement. Based on trial and error, I finally found out that I had developed an allergy to eggs!! It is still a mystery to me, how I got this allergy. But then, after all, I lived in India and I absolutely had no worries. I had a thousand options other than eggs and this allergy was never a pressing problem for me.

Tortoise coil rolls again!! Flashback ends.

It is me now, landed in Germany. I was safe for some days, as long as I remained at home. When I went out and had to eat in restaurants or in office canteen, only then, I realised - it is not just a problem, but a curse :-( When I eat out, mostly I opt for vegetarian food, and you know what? Every pasta has egg, Gnocchi has eggs, fried cheese(like cutlets) has eggs... Ooopss.. I was frustrated!! In office canteen, only salad!! Apart from that, as I go shopping, I see an array of cakes, sweets, struedel and lots of other inviting items, which I never saw in India. I could only drool on seeing them and taste them in my imagination. I realised, before I get into any kind of depression, I must take some initiative.

This is how I started searching in the internet for cakes, that could be made without eggs. I must admit, I was astonished to find a lot of good recipes. I had a good working oven, and thus started trying my hands. Of course, I get some bad results now and then, but they dont stop me from trying further. After all, my husband gladly agrees to be subjected to my experiments :-) I've made a few cakes from Madhuram's egglesscooking and there, she provides a lot of tips for suitable egg substitutes in cakes and muffins.

I'm going to present here, one muffin recipe, which I adapted from Women's Weekly - Cooking Class Cakes. It was quite simple and called for just one egg. So, I replaced the egg with Flax Seed powder. I had no raspberries, so used blueberries instead. The result was pretty good and we were satisfied. Here it goes...

Ingredients:
Self raising flour - 2 1/2 cups
Butter - 90 g
Sugar - 1 cup
Buttermilk - 1 1/4 cups
Dessicated coconut - 1/3 cup
Frozen blueberries - 150g
Flax seed powder - 1 tsp

Method:
Take the flour in a large bowl. Chop the butter and gently fold into the flour. Add sugar, buttermilk and dessicated coconut to the flour.

Whisk the flax seed with about 1/4 cup of water and add to the flour mix. Now, add the blueberries and gently fold until just combined.

Preheat the oven to about 180C. Grease a 12 hole muffin tray with butter and arrange the muffin cups on them. Divide the mixture into the cups. Bake for about 20 minutes. Check if it is done. Stand for a few minutes and turn on a wire rack to cool.

It makes about 12 muffins. For flax seed powder ratio, please refer EgglessCooking - Egg substitutes. I followed exactly how it was mentioned there.
I'm sending this post as an entry to Priya's Now Serving : BEST ‘WESTERN’ DESSERT EVENT and to US Masala's Bookmarked Recipes event