Chocolate Zucchini Flax Muffins

I recently realized I hadn't posted a recipe in ages, and for that I apologize. I promise you I'm always gluten-free baking and these days, I have no shortage of helpers.

I found this recipe for zucchini flax muffins and using it as a base I was amazed at the soft fluffly muffins I created. In my mind, zucchini and chocolate go hand in hand so I adapted the recipe just a little bit more until I had a recipe that that's so good I've had more than one person tell me they never would have known it was gluten-free.

These muffins come together quickly, they are soft, springy and delightful in your mouth and I promise you even if you have an energy-filled two year old helping you out every step of the way, they will still be delicious!

Chocolate Zucchini Flax Muffins
(gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, soy-free)

adapted from Zucchini, Banana and Flaxseed Muffins by Martha Stewart

Ingredients:

• 1-1/4 cup gluten-free flour mix (I'm in LOVE with this one)
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup ground flaxseed
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp baking powder divided 
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1-1/2 cup grated zucchini (~1 large)
• 1/3 cup ripe banana
• 3/4 cup coconut milk
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp vanilla

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F and line or grease muffin tins.
2. In a small bowl mash the banana, mix with 1 tsp of baking powder and set aside.
3. In a large bowl whisk together the gluten-free flour, cocoa powder, brown sugar, flaxseed, baking soda, the other tsp of baking powder and salt.
4. In a medium bowl whisk together the banana baking soda mixture, zucchini, coconut milk, egg and vanilla.
5. Gently stir the wet mixture into the dry being careful not to overmix.
6. Scoop muffin tins 3/4 full and bake for 20-25 minutes until top is firm and springs back from a light touch.
7. Cool completely on a wire rack and enjoy!

Yield: 15 muffins

Makes 30 mini-muffins, bake for 13-15 minutes.

Update: I accidently ommitted the flax from the recipe, but it has now been updated with the correct quantities. My apologies. a :) 08 April 2013

Wise Bites Cookies | Allergy-friendly deliciousness

All you baked-goods loving, allergy-suffering folks, there's a new cookie on the block and you're going to adore them. Wise Bites are free of the top eight allergens (peanuts, tree nuts, gluten, eggs, soy, dairy, fish and shellfish), which means nearly anyone with a food allergy can enjoy them and given the delicious flavour profile and great texture, enjoy them you will.

Wise Bites are unassuming looking cookies that are reminiscent of a power bar, they are a dense cookie with an almost fudgy texture that is neither gooey or crumbly. The flavour on the other hand is all cookie, despite the change in texture from traditional (wheat-based) cookies, the quinoa chocolate chip cookies tasted remarkably familiar.  If you love candied ginger, you MUST try the quinoa triple ginger cookie;  the ginger is evident in every bite but never overpowering nor overwhelming. The third and final wise bite cookie is the quinoa triple fudge and its every bit as tasty as it sounds.

Wise Bites also come in small bars in the same three flavours; with two small bars per package they were perfect snack to feed to my boys and given the healthy ingredients I didn't even feel guilty about letting them eat pre-packaged cookies.

If all that wasn't good enough, these amazing little morsels are are locally made in Richmond, BC (right next to my Dad's warehouse in fact) and their primary ingredient happens to be one of my all time favourite grains, quinoa. Don't be put off if quinoa isn't your thing, these cookies taste amazing and not a bit like quinoa.

Wise Bites also make hearty quinoa muffins (that I would absolutely buy if they were available at my local coffee shop) and sell bulk items such as quinoa flour, chocolate chips and organic crystallized ginger.

Wise Bites are available at a number of local stores, or they can be purchased online. I hope you try them and love them as much as I do.

Share the love folks, you can find Wise Bites online, on Facebook and on Twitter!

I recieved product in exchange for this review, however all opinions are my own.

Cranberry Orange Muffins | a gluten-free, dairy-free and soy-free recipe

I love good recipe swaps.  I recently swapped my quinoa minestrone recipe for a cranberry orange loaf that I used as the basis for this cranberry orange gluten-free, dairy-free and soy-free muffin recipe.  These are so tasty that the hubs just ate half of mine after stealing 'just a nibble'.  I’ve made these muffins twice this week; the first time batch I split with my sister Kat, but this time I’m keeping them all to myself.

This recipe uses more sugar than I usually do, but I think the tartness of the fresh cranberries kind of needs it so I’m hesitant to cut it back.  You could probably substitute honey or ¾ cup of agave with good results if you wanted to keep the recipe clean.

You need to chop up an entire bag of cranberries for this recipe, it’s kind of a pain to do, but it’s worth it if you want little cranberry pockets that ooze flavour in your muffin.  I guarantee you will think you have too many cranberries, but I promise you don’t.  Stir them in, all of them, you won’t be sorry.  I’ve also added a completely optional sprinkling of sugar on the top of the muffin.  I just love that little crunch of the sugar with the tart of the cranberry.

This recipe uses my gluten-free flour mix but I'm sure any good gluten-free mix would work.  Also, don't skip the ginger ale, that little bit of carbonation really lightens up the muffin.  If you don't have any ginger ale, I'm sure any clear carbonated beverage would work, even just soda water.

It’s hard to believe I could love these muffins so much, I don’t even like oranges or orange juice.

Cranberry Orange Muffin Recipe

gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free

Ingredients:

• 2 cups gluten-free flour mix
• 1 cup sugar + more for sprinkling*
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ tsp xantham gum
• ¼ cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• ¾ cup orange juice
• zest of one orange
• ¼ cup ginger ale
• 1 bag (~3 cups) fresh or frozen cranberries, coarsely chopped

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F, prepare muffin pans.
2. In a large bowl whisk together the dry ingredients and set aside.
3. In a medium bowl whisk the oil, egg, orange juice and orange zest together.
4. Gently stir the ginger ale into the wet ingredients before pouring the wet ingredients into the dry.
5. Gently stir the batter, as soon as it starts to come together, fold in the cranberries until blended.
6. Nearly fill the muffin cups, then sprinkle lightly with sugar*.
7. Bake for 35 minutes, turning once during baking, until tops are evenly browned and lightly firm to the touch. 
8. Allow muffins to cool in pan for 10 minutes before transferring to a rack to finish cooling.

Yield: 15-18 Muffins
* optional

Gluten-Free Spanikopita Muffins

Until two weeks ago, I had absolutley never contemplated making savoury muffins; if I'm going to bake, I'm all about the sweet stuff.  That changed when I recently received a butternut squash muffin, complete with feta, sunflower seeds and a hint of spiciness from one of the girls at work.  They were delicious and my interest was piqued.

Around the same time, my Mom dropped off a book she'd picked up at the thrift store entitled,  Gloria's Glorious Muffins; over 200 pages of muffin recipes, including an entire chapter devoted to the elusive savory/dinner muffins. Many of the recipes intrigued me, but when I saw 'Spanikopita Muffins' I practically began to drool.  Since going gluten-free I've been able to recreate many dishes, but I had yet to attempt the spinach and feta deliciousness that is spanikopita.

Inspired by a recent gluten-free muffin success that yielded a fabulous texture, I decided to attempt to convert Gloria's spanikopita recipe.  The resulting recipe is gluten-free and soy-free but not dairy-free, which means the boy cannot enjoy them, but sometimes a Momma's just got to do something for herself right?

The results not only tasted amazing, the texture was perfect, remniscent of 'real' muffins.  I have been eating these savoury muffins for a week straight (I made two batches last week) and they are still a delight to eat. The only downfall is that they stick to the paper liners, so a little patience is required if you don't want to be eating the paper along with the muffins.  I like them warmed up just a tad in the microwave; seriously they are so good, I ate two (I just couldn't seem to stop at one) at coffee bread every morning last week.

Since this recipe was originally gluten-full feel free to replace the various flours with 1.5 cups of whole wheat and 1.5 cups of white flour and omit the xantham; I'm certain they'll be delicious.

Gluten-Free Spanikopita Muffins

(adapted from Gloria's Glorious Muffins)

Dry ingredients:

• 1 cup Sorghum Flour
• 1 cup Brown Rice Flour
• 1 cup Tapioca Starch
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp xantham gum

Wet Ingredients

• 1.5 cups of vegetable or chicken stock 
• ¼ cup olive oil
• 1 egg

Add-In Ingredients

• ½ cup cottage cheese
• 1 cup crumbled feta cheese
• 1 cup chopped fresh spinach *
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 Tbsp honey

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375F and prepare muffin tins with paper liners.
2. Whisk dry ingredients together in a medium bowl.
3. In a separate bowl blend together the wet ingredients.
4. Mix the ‘add-ins’ into the wet ingredients.
5. Add dry ingredients into the wet and mix until just blended.  The batter will be thick.
6. Spoon into prepared muffin tins, they will be slightly fuller than the muffin cups.
7. Bake for 30 minutes, rotating once half way, until browned and firm to the touch.
8. Allow to sit in the muffin tins 10 minutes before removing to a rack to cool.
9. Brush tops with olive oil (don’t worry if they look greasy, the oil will absorb quickly and keep the tops from getting crumbly).
10. Enjoy the yummy deliciousness!

Yield: 12 muffins

* The original recipe called for 1/2 cup of either fresh or frozen chopped spinach, but I found that wasn't enough with fresh.  If using frozen, make sure you wring out as much mouisture as possible and would recommend using only 1/2 cup.

GF/DF/SF Quinoa Zucchini Mini Muffins

I like to think that even if we could eat store bought, processed foods (which we can't) that I would still take the time to make our baked goods at home, at least most of the time.  First off, I love to bake, I always have.  Second, if I make it, I know whats in it.  There's nothing worse than reading a list of ingredients and not being entirely sure what the purpose of each strange sounding thing on the list is.  Finally, I love that in making my own goodies, I can adapt the flavours to my own tastes, or as is the case as of late, the boys' tastes.

The boy doesn't care all that much for sweet things, in fact I made chocolate chip banana bread (gluten and dairy free of course) and he touched it to his mouth ever so briefly before refusing it.  Baked goods with quinoa on the other hand?  He loves them.  Strange kid, I know, he loves healthy snacks so long as they are flavourful.

I've been making him mini muffins of various varieties for quite some time now and as you can see from his picture, I think I finally found just the right combination to appease his taste buds.  These Quinoa zucchini muffins are gluten-free, dairy-free and soy-free and I'm pretty sure that with the use of a flax gel, they could easily be egg-free too. 

 

Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Soy-Free
Quinoa Zucchini Mini Muffins

Ingredients:

1/2 cup Sorghum flour

1/2 cup Sweet Rice flour

1/2 cup Quinoa flakes

1/4 cup potato starch
1/4 cup tapioca starch

1/2 cup brown sugar*

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp xantham gum
1/2 tsp sea salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1 egg

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup rice milk

1 tsp vanilla

1 medium zucchini, grated (about 1 generous cup)

1/3 cup cranberries

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 400F and prepare your mini muffin tin (I use the mini muffin liners)
• In a medium bowl, whisk together all of the dry ingredients by hand.  (A whisk will mix the ingredients and add air to your flour mixture)
• Blend together your egg, oil and rice milk.  Stir in the vanilla.
• Add the zucchini and cranberries to the wet mixture and mix until combined.
• Mix the dry ingredients into the wet (its ok to blend this more than traditional muffin recipes).
• Drop by large tablespoons into the mini muffin tin.
• Bake for approximately 18-20 minutes until firm to touch, lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out mostly clean.
• Cool and enjoy.

 Yield 2 dozen mini muffins.

*I used brown sugar and sweetened craisins, since that was what I had on hand, and actually found these a little bit sweet.  I might try substituting agave next time, or reducing the sugar to 1/3 cup.