Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Paleo/primal Cupcakes and Muffins

I was wondering around Borders the other day with the kids after they marked everything down 40%. The kids were looking at Legos and I was looking in the health section. I happened upon Elena Amsterdam's Gluten-Free Cupcakes book. I've loved Elana's pantry website forever and wanted the book, but wasn't really willing to pay full price for it. At 40% off, I put it in my cart!

I've been trying to think of things to put in my kids' lunchboxes that will get more protein and veggies into their diet. My son is not a big fan of meat and won't eat nuts; so this has the potential to become an issue when he starts eating lunch at school. I'm hoping that I can concoct a few different muffin recipes that include almond flour, cheese, fruits and/or veggies. Starting with Elana's recipes I think I may be able to make something that will work for both kids.

Today I went on a cupcake/muffin making frenzy and made 3 different kinds! I made a Banana Chocolate muffin that was by the recipe, then made a cheese muffin that was a little different and a coconut one that I changed significantly. I think the coconut was my favorite and I will definitely make that one again. The cheese muffin needs something and it has the potential to house many different veggies for school lunches; so I'll need to work on that one. Every recipe in the book looks great and includes healthy ingredients and minimal sugars.  She uses mostly Agave for her recipes, but I think fruit could be substituted to make them even healthier. So here are my modified recipes. Enjoy!

Cheese Muffins (Gluten Free, Primal)
1 1/4 C almond meal
1/4 C coconut flour
1/4 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
2 Eggs
3 T Coconut Oil melted
1.5 C shredded Cheese (I used Cheddar, but other kinds would be nice, too)

Mix flours, salt and baking soda in a bowl. Add eggs and oil and mix well. Fold in cheese then put 1 T of batter in a paper lined mini-muffin tin (use 1/4 C of mixture if making a regular sized muffin). Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes for mini muffins and 20 minutes for larger muffins. Check for doneness with a toothpick. Let muffins rest for 15 minutes before eating. Makes about 3 dozen mini muffins or 12 regular sized ones.




Coconut Cupcakes (Paleo, primal, gluten free and dairy free)
1/2 C Coconut flour
1/4 t salt
1 t baking soda
4 Eggs
1/2 C coconut oil
1/2 C unsweetened applesauce
2 T liquid sweetener of choice (maple syrup or honey are good choices)
1 T vanilla
1/2 C unsweetened shredded coconut

Mix all ingredients except shredded coconut until well blended then fold in shredded coconut. put 1 T of batter in a paper lined mini-muffin tin (use 1/4 C of mixture if making a regular sized muffin). Bake at 350 for about 20minutes for mini muffins and 30 minutes for larger muffins. Check for doneness with a toothpick. Let muffins rest for 45 minutes before eating.  Makes about 3 dozen mini muffins or 12 regular sized ones.


6 comments:

  1. Hi Angie! Thanks for sharing the sound great. How did you change the cheese muffin recipe? It sounds good but I can't get a hold coconut flour so I need an alternate recipe.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If you can't find coconut flour locally you can buy it online at Amazon or other online retailers. But the cheese muffins can be made without the coconut flour. Just add an extra egg and 1/4 C extra almond flour and it should be ok. The Almond meal I used was a little course, so if you can get Almond flour rather than almond meal it will work better. Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great post, thanks. To make things even trickier, our school is nut free which makes gf even trickier especially if you are trying to make it low sugar/carb. The things we do for our kids!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think that coconut cupcake recipe has a lot of potential. Thinking of lemon/coconut cupcakes. Can these be frozen, or what is the best way to keep them? Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I just asked a question, but I have another as well. Do you know what the purpose of the applesauce is? Sweetener? Fat substitute? I substituted pumpkin puree because I didn't have any applesauce. Had to add 4 more eggs to get the batter thin enough. Would like to avoid having to do that again. Maybe it's the order in which I added the ingredients together?

    ReplyDelete
  6. They can be frozen or refrigerated for quite a while. The applesauce is for sweetness and for moisture. the coconut flour is very thirsty and needs lots of liquid to make it work. Substituting pumpkin would take away a lot of the moisture you'd normally get in applesauce. So, yes, you'd need to add some sort of liquid to compensate for it. If you really don't want to use applesauce, I'd thin the pumpkin puree down quite a bit with water or juice of some sort. And you'll also be losing some sweetness by subbing pumpkin...there's already not a lot of sweetener in this recipe as it is, so i'm not sure how they'd taste...

    Also, make sure all ingredients are at room temp. Adding cold eggs to the coconut oil will make it harden up and the whole mixture will be almost solid. Good Luck!

    ReplyDelete

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...