Ever want to know how to make gluten and sugar free muffins?
Before I give you the recipe, I’m going to tell you something that you may find either very cute or quite sickening and that is that my boyfriend and I constantly call each other “muffins”. Like, a lot.
Although, I’m not that ashamed – I presume most couples act in an embarrassingly silly way in private that they’d be horrified if ever witnessed by anyone else (I hope his friends read this… muffins! muahaha).
Anyway… after saying the word “muffins” to each other about a thousand times, we just plain well got a real hankering to have some muffins.
Now, your typical muffins are not a healthy treat at all. Generally full of refined white flour and refined white sugar, it’s not something I want to indulge in. And I knew if I went to the effort of making muffins, I would want to indulge in a fair few.
The challenge was this: Make gluten free muffins without having to go out to the store and buy ingredients (because it was raining and we didn’t want to). So we raided the kitchen and set forth a real experiment.
Even though I accepted that it was an experiment and may not turn out the beautiful fluffy delicacy that I wanted, deep down I knew I was going to be devastated if they didn’t work. I really, really wanted muffins. But luckily, they exceeded my expectations and turned out to be rather glorious. They really hit the muffin spot.
Alright, so this is what my thrown together recipe consisted of, although this is definitely not the only way to make gluten free muffins (it just corresponded with what was in the pantry and it worked well).
Ingredients:
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1 1/2 cups almond flour
1/2 cup of butter (preferably quality grass fed butter if possible)
2 large ripe apples
3 to 4 tablespoons of honey (preferably raw)
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 or more of frozen berries such as blueberries
2 teaspoons of baking powder or baking soda
Instructions:
Did you know that you can actually make your own flour by grinding up grains or nuts in a blender? It doesn’t even have to be a good blender – the one we have here hardly rips apart kale. Yet it seemed to do fine with grinding up the rice and almonds to make flour for me (I’m really sorry if you take my advice and this doesn’t work for you, but it should work with most crappy blenders).
- Step 1: Put 3/4 of a cup of rice into your blender WITHOUT WATER. This is important – your blender will make flour but only with dry ingredients. If you put any water in it, it will all go very pear shaped. Blend it up to a powder and put it into a large bowl. 3/4 of a cup should make approximately 1/2 cup of flour.
- Step 2: Blend up 1 3/4 cups of almonds to make 1 1/2 cups of flour. Put that in the big bowl with the rice flour.
- Step 3: Cut up the two apples into small-ish chunks (so they blend well), and throw them in the blender.
- Step 4: Melt the butter on the stove or microwave and put it in the blender with the apples. Crack the two eggs and throw them in there too, as well as the honey and cinnamon and baking powder/soda. Blend it all up. Should be fairly watery consistency.
- Step 5: Mix this in with the flour in the big bowl, then mix your frozen berries in there too. Stir well.
- Step 6: Let them sit a minute while you heat up the oven and prepare your muffin trays (maybe put a little butter in each if they’re not non-stick, or use those paper things they put on the bottom of cupcakes).
- Step 7: Spoon out the batter into the muffin trays. Only fill it to be level with the top of the tray – don’t overfill them as the muffins will hopefully rise up (you need the baking powder/soda to ensure the muffins rise, so don’t skip out on that ingredient).
- Step 8: Bake them for approximately 20-ish minutes at 400 degrees (farenheit) or until you stick a fork in the middle of them and it comes out relatively clean.
- Step 9: EAT!! YUM.
PS: I’d like to say: Just because this recipe is healthier than glutenous sugary muffins, doesn’t mean it’s, like… as healthy as vegetables, and they may be hard for some people to digest (unsoaked rice, heated almonds, etc… on that note I’m probably going to try this with coconut flour next time which should be better).
Please enjoy these fabulous gluten free blueberries muffins occasionally and without guilt!
