This is going to be a short post because most people would not like to wax eloquent on their failures. I don't either necessarily, but I didn't want this picture to go to waste. 
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I also didn't want all my hard work to have been in vain either. Although 'hard work' in this case is open to interpretations. Anyway, on to the food. I was attempting to create dairy-free muffins for the sake of sharing to a class of eager playwrights, one of whom is allergic to milk. I admit I was a little frazzled whilst in the process of combining things and made a few mistakes. One of which was introducing lemon zest into the wet ingredients before the eggs. The other of which was assuming coconut butter would 'mash' in the same manner as real butter. One of these mistakes is the culprit for what is  seen here:
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That's right. Prematurely denatured egg pieces. Or, in rather more laymen's terms, my eggs curdled. At first I thought it was the lemon zest, but the more I think about it, the more unlikely that seems. But now I believe it was the small amount of coconut butter I had to melt in a timely fashion, aka microwave. Pouring hot oil into a mixture with eggs that hadn't been fully incorporated was an oversight on my part. But, in my defense, I've never baked with coconut butter before and I was nervous (there is a cute boy in the class I was baking these for). 
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Now because I said 'short' post I will leave you with just a few final thoughts. The muffins, despite their weird blotches of obvious egg, weren't too bad. Taste wise they were fine although they did leave the slightest oil aftertaste (afterfeeling?). I didn't take them to class because they didn't live up to my imaginary impress-upon standards but my roommates are enjoying them as we speak. 

There is a chance I will try again soon which will of course mean another post about them. In the meantime, non-existent readers (hello? are you out there?), I seek advice on baking with rock hard coconut butter. 

-Bizzle
 
Something you will learn about me quickly, dear readers, is my utter inability to follow a recipe. No, I do not have a disability or even a compunction against them. Truly, I just prefer to create and diverge. (It's why I have a major in British Studies and not just English.) The two following morsels are products of this hypothetical approach to cooking. Basically, (one of) my mottos in the kitchen is, Let's Try It. 
To begin with is what I am going to call, uncreatively because it is not perfected, which is when it will acquire a 'real' name, Whole Orange Tart with a Chocolate Crust. I remembered coming across a post over at Smitten Kitchen for a Whole Lemon Tart. Only thing was, I had oranges at hand and not lemons. So I decided, why not? and gave it a go with oranges. 
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I adopted a basic pie crust dough to include vanilla and cocoa. To be honest, I am not a huge fan of pie and an even bigger skeptic of pie crust. I just don't like eating it. But I still make it because it is easy and seems right. Anyway, the filling was a whole blended orange and some sugar, a stick of butter, an egg and an egg yolk. And an indeterminate amount of 'dry ingredients.' Although this blog has no readers yet, if any future readers see this and demand a more explicit definition of these ingredients, leave a comment and I'll see if I remember. I didn't have a suitable pan for this tart, so I ended up using a muffin tin and making tartlettes. 
The first batch, which I did not overfill, cooked quite beautifully at 325 for another indeterminate amount of time. (Sorry people, precision is not my forte.) The second batch was slightly different in baking powder content and bubbled to an unsightly texture. Upon tasting though, they are quite good. Definitely a bit too sweet, which makes me glad my psychic foresight, aka fate, had me make them into tiny little bundles of goodness. One is definitely enough. 
The second delicious result of the evening is, for the time being, Orange Muffins with Currants and Poppy-seeds. Basically I had leftover filling from the tarts above. So I plopped in some European style yogurt, whole wheat flour, currants and poppyseeds, essentially making what I was hoping would more or less be a bread. I should have added a little more baking powder/soda because they turned out quite dense and did not rise like I wanted them to. However, they are yummy and tasty and overall an experimental success. 
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To close I would just like to say that these pics are slightly doctored. My regular camera lens is broken at the moment, so I was using my extremely inconvenient telephoto lens. Let's just say that trying to get a close up of an already small object without having to stand more than 5 feet away with a telephoto lens is difficult for an amateur like me.