I am in heaven! Finally an alternative to baking and cooking with Almond Meal. Coconut Flour is SCD Legal, it is very good for you, it is great for thickening stews and sauces and comes up beautifully in baking.

Here are some facts:

Coconut Flour, the new low-carb, high-fibre, gluten-free alternative to wheat flour. It contains no fillers, grains, or soy.

Coconut Flour is made from fresh organic coconut meat. The meat is dried and defatted and then finely ground into a powder very similar in consistency to wheat flour. Use 15-25% in place of other flours in most standard recipes. A variety of delicious baked goods can also be made using 100% coconut flour.

Coconut Flour is a low carb flour. It is ideal for baking low – carb breads and baked goods. It has fewer digestible (net) carbs than any other flour, including soy! It even has fewer digestible carbs than most vegetables.

Coconut Flour is a good source of protein. It has as much protein as wheat flour but it has none of the specific protein in wheat called “gluten”. This is an advantage for a growing percentage of the population that have developed an allergy to gluten or a wheat sensitivity.

Coconut Flour is high in fibre. It contains 38.5% fibre which is the highest percentage of dietary fibre found in any flour (wheat bran is 27% fibre). Coconut flour contains almost 3 times as much fibre as soy flour. Instead of contributing to health problems like starch and sugar do, fibre promotes good health.

This great information comes from a fantastic website which sells coconut flours and oils in Australia: (click here)

Coconut Flour and oil is widely available throughout the U.S and Europe.

Muffins

Makes 6

2 eggs
3 egg whites*
1 tsp vanilla essence
150 g (½ cup) honey
30 g (2 Tsp) coconut oil
75 g (¾ cup) coconut flour
1 tsp bicarbonate soda

100 g (1 cup) apples or berries
or bananas

*by eliminating the egg yolks the
fat content of the recipe is reduced

Pre-heat oven to 160ºC/320 F – baking time 45 minutes

Line a six-hole muffin tin with baking paper: To do this I tear of 6 pieces of baking paper about 10 cm wide. Then once the filling is made I mould the paper into one muffin mould first and while holding down with one hand fill it with the dough with the other hand. The paper sticks out a fair bit at the top, but that’s part of the decorative look.

Mix the eggs and egg whites with the vanilla essence, honey and coconut oil using an electric beater until well combined and frothy. Then add the sifted coconut flour and bicarbonate soda and mix well. Finally fold the fruit under and place in the oven for 45 minutes.

Remove from the oven and lift the muffins out of the tin and place on a wire grid to cool.

I find it extremely hard waiting for them to cool down and have been known to burn my mouth on the hot fruit inside the muffin. They are of course at their most delicious when still warm from the oven, but even after refrigeration a quick warm in the oven (about 10 minutes on fan forced) will make them taste like you’ve just made them.

Refrigerate in an airtight container.

Any bacteria can overgrow, but with a good balance they are generally kept in check – so for those with relatively healthy microflora in their body bifidum may not be too bad (though some research indicates that when bifidum persists beyond childhood it can be a marker for certain cancers APPLIED AND ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY, Sept. 1995, p. 3202-3207 Vol. 61, No. 9 from http://www.breakingtheviciouscycle.info/knowledge_base/kb/bifidus.htm )

However, with SCD microbes are starved out. Bifidum bacteria seem to take advantage of this unique situation and the bacteria which normally is a good bacteria tends to overgrow. And when there is overgrowth of any bacteria their metabolites can cause problems.

Unfortunately there is no research on this specific aspect of bifidum bacteria because it seems to pertain only to SCDers.

Perhaps it is because the SCD clears out the harmful microbes and bifidum takes over, overgrowing into huge numbers. The by-products of bifidum bacteria could be what sends people into flares – especially those who have sensitive guts or those at the beginning of the diet, these people unfortunately have “fertile ground” for bifidum bacteria
to overgrow.”