An Ode to Coconut and Lime

There are a lot of foodie blogs out there. I mean a LOT. It's kind of ridonkulous really, but who am I too talk, being one of them myself? I follow tons of them, but have found that there are only a handful that I really read. There are really only about a dozen food bloggers that really make me want to cook everything they cook. Rachel of Coconut and Lime is one of the very few food bloggers who posts only her own original recipes, and having done so for 6 years, she's got quite a stockpile to go through. She's celebrating her sixth year of blogging with a little contest. The simple part is preparing one of her recipes to post, the hard part is choosing one. I have at least a dozen of Rachel's recipes starred in my Google reader, and I've already prepared a bunch of others. She's the one who introduced me to the joys of Gingerbread Pancakes and the idea that oven roasted chickpeas make an excellent snack. Since I had a bunch of these little red jewels on hand, I ended up with Strawberry Coconut Scones.

I love traditional scones, but hate using all of that butter, so I'm always on the lookout for alternatives. One of my favorites is the recipe for Strawberry Sour Cream Scones I made last summer, so I knew Rachel's recipe would be equally as good. Homegirl wasn't kidding when she noted that this is a very sticky dough! I had to use the back of my spatula to smooth it out into a circle, then scored it with my greased knife, wiping the knife clean between passes. In the end I could have skipped the scoring since it all merged together during baking anyway! I just cut the circle into slices. Next time I might increase the coconut or flour a bit to see if it will make the dough dry enough to hold up to cutting. And yes, there will certainly be a next time. These were moist and delicious, the lemon and coconut added just enough sweeteness and pop, and I love that you can get the flavor and crunchy exterior of a scone without all of that butter.

Happy Blogiversary, Rachel!