Piña Colada Muffins #MuffinMonday

A quick question for you, as I pack my bags to fly back to the US (BECAUSE MY FIRST BABY GIRL IS GRADUATING FROM UNIVERSITY!) for reasons that don't seem possible, given that I only feel about 24 myself.  Have you ever cooked or baked with coconut oil? This is my first time and I have to admit it reminds me of beaches and Hawaiian Tropic suntanning oil.  But in a good way.  Combining it with pineapple in these muffins, I am back on my honeymoon in Barbados, sipping piña coladas.  While the health-professional jury is still out, it seems that coconut oil does have some benefits.  All I can tell you is that it was a great way to add coconut flavor to my muffins, without actually adding more fat in the form of grated coconut, in addition to the usual canola or butter.  Which makes me think it might be a good addition to curries as well, instead of coconut milk.  What do you think?  Coconut oil, yay or nay?

Ingredients
2 cups or 250g all purpose flour
1/2 cup or 115g sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup or 180ml milk
1/4 cup or 60ml coconut oil
2 eggs
1/2 cup or 120ml pineapple syrup (from canned pineapple)
About 3/4 cup or 140g canned pineapple, drained weight

1/8-1/4 cup or 10-20g sweetened flaked coconut for decoration (optional)

Method
Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare a 12-cup muffin tin by greasing or lining with paper muffin cups.

Drain your small can of pineapple and reserve the syrup.  Chop the pineapple up with a big knife.  Or a small knife.  I’m flexible.

Set aside a small pile of pineapple for adding to the muffin tops before baking.

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together.

In another bowl, whisk together milk, coconut oil, pineapple syrup, vanilla and eggs.

That's the coconut oil.  I don't know what I expected it to look like since bottle
was not see-through but the white surprised me. 

Add all the milk mixture to the flour mixture.

Gently fold just until dry ingredients are moistened.  Then fold in your small pile of pineapple bits.

Divide your batter relatively evenly between the 12 muffin cups.

Top each cup of batter with a few pieces of the reserved pineapple and sprinkle with a few coconut flakes, if using.

Bake 20-25 minutes or until muffins are golden.

Remove from oven and let cool for a few minutes before removing muffins from tin.  Cool further on a wire rack.

Enjoy!

Baked Christmas Ham

I am in Cairo, house hunting and baking ham!  We were invited to the home of a colleague for a lovely Christmas celebration yesterday and I promised to help another friend bake his ham to take along.  To that end, I hauled brown sugar, mustard, maraschino cherries, wooden toothpicks and canned pineapple slices with me from KL.  I am now informed that all of those things are available here but I wasn’t taking any chances!

Ingredients

1 whole ham (ours was 19.2 lbs or 8.89kg  and boneless– an enormous thing of beauty)

3 cans pineapple slices

1 jar maraschino cherries

2 cups or 400g  dark brown sugar

7 oz or about half of a small bottle of French’s mustard (207ml)

Bunch of wooden toothpicks

(If your ham is smaller, you might not need as much of the other ingredients.  Use your judgment.)

Method

Score the ham with a sharp knife.  I forgot to photograph this part but scoring the ham just means making very shallow cuts one way on the ham and then turning it to make shallow cuts the other way, ending up with a diamond or crisscross pattern on the skin of your ham.

Using toothpicks, secure the pineapple slices all over your ham.

Add one cherry in the center of each pineapple slice and hold it firm with another toothpick.

Mix your mustard and brown sugar.  Spread over the ham with a small spoon or pastry brush.   

Don’t put it too thick because you don’t want the sugar to burn as the ham cooks.  You won’t use the whole bowl initially, so set aside the balance for the last 30 minutes of cooking.

Add a couple of mugs full of water to the bottom of the baking pan so that the glaze that drips off does not burn black in the dry pan.  Check often throughout baking that the pan does not get dried out.  Keep adding water as needed.

Bake in a 350°F or 180°C oven around 10-12 minutes per pound.  Hams are already cooked but you want the internal temperature to reach between 130-140°F or 54-60°C before serving.

Halfway through baking, take the ham out of the oven and baste with the pan juices.

About 30 minutes before you think the ham will be done, take it out and add the balance of the brown sugar mustard mixture. 

When it is done, remove the pineapples and cherries and put them around your serving dish.  Slice the ham and put it in the middle.  

This was about one third of that huge ham.  We kept slicing and refilling the platter as needed. 

Enjoy!