Coconut Lime Muffins

I won't lie to you - these are essentially a superficial retread of my Lemon Ginger Muffins. Because I was kind of bored, I also added some soaked zereshk (barberries) to these, which works really well with the Lemon Ginger ones. It was okay, but was ultimately a distraction from the coconut-lime combination. I'll leave 'em out, next time. Also, next time I will probably add a topping of toasted coconut, too, for pretty's sake.

Coconut Lime Muffins

Makes 12 regular-sized muffins

2 limes, zest and juice
1/2 cup sugar
2/3 cup coconut milk
1/4 cup coconut yoghurt (I used Liberte's Mediterranée Coconut, but you could use plain Greek-style yoghurt)
1/4 cup canola oil
1 egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 1/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

Preheat oven to 400 F degrees.

Grease the bottoms only of a 12-cup regular sized muffin tin (or spritz with canola spray).

Mix the coconut milk, yoghurt, and lime juice, and let stand. If your limes are particularly large and/or juicy, you might only need the juice of one. You want about 3 tablespoons of juice, optimally.

Peel the zest from the lime using a vegetable peeler (long strips). Put the zest pieces into a food processor with the sugar, and pulse until the zest is finely chopped into the sugar. Add the egg, oil, vanilla, and coconut milk mixture, processing after each addition until smooth.

In a separate bowl, stir together flour, shredded coconut, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Make a well in the flour mixture and pour the contents of the food processor in all at once. Stir rapidly with a fork until any dry bits are gone. Don't worry about small lumps, though, the batter doesn't need to be smooth. Divide the batter between muffin cups. If you like, sprinkle a teaspoon of streusel topping or toasted coconut over each muffin before baking (not pictured here).

Bake in preheated oven for about 15-18 minutes. Let stand in pan for five minutes, then run a knife blade around the edges to loosen each muffin so that you can remove them to wire racks for cooling.

Store cooled muffins in a sealable container in the fridge to keep them fresh. You can also wrap them individually in plastic and freeze. Reheating a muffin for 10 seconds in the microwave works beautifully, and makes them taste oven-fresh, or as we say "freshly killed".