Coconut Oat Muffins

I had high hopes for these.

Coconut is delicious, oats are comforting, and the last recipe I used from this site was the innovative and wonderful Root Beer Cupcakes with Cream Soda Frosting creation I made for Dave’s birthday.  Seemed like an automatic win.

The first instruction, oddly, was to soak the coconut in milk. I suppose I should take some blame here, because I didn’t have flaked coconut, only shredded, which may not have been the right way to go. But I soaked it in milk anyway.

I whisked together some eggs, agave nectar, canola oil, yogurt, vanilla, and buttermilk. So far, so good.

That seemed easy enough.

Another bowl, another whisk, and some dry ingredients: whole wheat white flour, toasted wheat germ, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

And then, as always, the two were combined.

In went the oats.

And then, after soaking up the milk with paper towels, I added the coconut.

I mixed.

I admit that neither the sight nor a quick taste of this filled me with confidence, but I kept going, with as much optimism as I could muster. I scooped the batter into muffin cups, and topped off each one with some more coconut.

I had heated the oven to 400, then dropped it to 350 when I put the muffins in. I went higher than usual on the pre-heating because I thought 350 was a little low for muffins; in hindsight, that might not have been the best choice. But I started checking them at 15 minutes, and they were done in 20. They smelled nice.

Sadly, these turned out bland. They didn’t look that great, but I’ve had delicious uglymuffins before. But these just didn’t have enough flavor to make them worth sharing. I ate one that night, and one the next morning, but I have no enthusiasm for more of them. I don’t even think I can bring them to work and offer them around in good conscience. They’re not terrible, but they’re not really anything, either.  It’s especially sad because I love coconut so much, and yet I could not save these muffins. I have failed them.

(If you think you’ll do right by these, check out the original recipe here for Coconut Oat Muffins. I don’t think it’s worth posting my version since they were so disappointing.)