Curious muffins with curiouser variations

 Marbled Coconut Muffins

I do eat other things besides sweets, I promise.  

I couldn't really decide what kind of muffin to make this morning, so this happened.  I was going to experiment with nuts and chocolate chips, but I finished off my stores of both last night.  And then my phone-timer was on silent, so I missed the critical almond moment.  Fresh cranberries were a little weird.  The test muffins without cranberries, however, are tasty!  If you just put the chocolate batter on top, rather than mixing it, you get an interesting chocolate "shell" on top (see below), but I like the mixed look (above) better.

Marbled Coconut Muffins (with fresh cranberries)

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 c coconut
*
1/4 c cocoa
*
1/3 cup oil
1 cup applesauce
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
enough soy milk and/or water to get a good muffin consistency
*
fresh cranberries?

walnuts?
chocolate chips?
*
slivered almonds

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375*. Oil muffin tins.
2. In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients except cocoa. Then, move half of the dry mix to a new bowl. Mix cocoa into only one of the bowls.
3. Add the remaining wet ingredients, dividing them equally between the two bowls. Add enough liquid to each so that you have two bowls of different-colored muffin batter. Add fresh cranberries, nuts, chocolate chips, etc., to one or both bowls.
4. Playfully ladle batter into muffin tins--you could do one color on top of the other, or two globs side-by-side. Use a fork to agitate the batter to create swirls, or leave the batter as is. Muffin tins should be almost full to the top.
5. Bake for 25 minutes, adding (if desired) slivered almonds on top when 5 minutes are remaining.  Makes 12 muffins.