A note about the final recipe. In the movie RATOUTILLE, Collette tells Linguini that one of the roles of a chef is to create new and different things. In the spirit of that I spent some time playing with avocados. Although avocado is a fruit, people shy away from using it as such. I created a scone and a muffin recipe featuring avocados. (Remember, I live in California.) While I was doing this, people thought that I would use avocado oil, but I wanted the texture, color, and “surprise” of pieces of avocado. If you don’t want to use avocados, delete them from the below and use 2 ½ cups (instead of one cup) diced mango, pineapple, or papaya. If your budget doesn’t permit, apples, peaches, nectarines, etc. will work fine. This recipe and its variations are a good teachable moment to your students that they can use regular ingredients (like avocados) in different ways (such as in a muffin), and that they can take and modify recipes to accommodate what ingredients are available and affordable.

1 cup (8 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cup sugar
4 large eggs
4 teaspoons freshly grated lime zest
5/8 cup heavy cream
2 cup Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1 Gluten Free flour or similar
½ teaspoon table salt
1 cup plus ½ cup sweetened flaked coconut
1 1/2 cup California avocado diced
1 cup diced pineapple, mango or papaya (preferably fresh)

Preheat regular oven to 350 degrees convection oven to 300 degrees.

Butter and flour 12 muffin cups or place 12 muffin paper muffin cups into a muffin pan.

Beat together the butter, sugar, and zest until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time. Beat in the cream. Reduce the blender speed to low and add in the flour and the salt just until the mixture combines. Gently fold in the avocado and pineapple and 1 cup of the coconut flakes.

Scoop batter about ¾ of the way into each muffin cup. Sprinkle the ½ cup of coconut onto the tops of each muffin.

Bake in the oven until a toothpick comes out clean and the edges are golden brown. This should take about 25 minutes. You should check the muffins after approximately 15 minutes. Note, if using a convection oven rotate the muffin pans in direction and move them to a different rack after 15 minutes.

Place muffin pan on a rack. After 10 minutes remove muffins from the pan. If you did not use paper cups run the back side of a knife or spreader around the edge of the muffin before removing it from the pan.