Blueberry Muffins GF DF EF SF

Deb December 24, 2024

If you don’t need to be quite as fussy, scroll down to a more decadent version with banana, choc chips and standard flour. Or for GAPS / low starch / low sugar options, check out my recipes for Christmas morning orange cranberry muffins – almond version and coconut flour version.

This Christmas, I’m baking for someone who is (hopefully temporarily) off eggs and all dairy apart from butter. The only flours he can have for now are white rice and a small amount of blanched almond flour. Not holding out much hope, I searched for a recipe with those parameters and found one! Good, means I don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Though I did make some minor tweaks:

  • Used butter instead of coconut oil
  • Used lakanto maple syrup, so the recipe is also added sugar free
  • Used white rice flour instead of brown
  • Instead of searching for GF, aluminium free baking powder, I used this recipe to convert it to baking soda + cream of tartar
  • I didn’t use the chia seeds, as they are off the menu for now as well
  • But I did add some dehydrated orange rind and some mixed spice to make them more Christmassy, and to compensate for the chia seeds
  • If I’d had some, I might have also used cranberries instead of blueberries to be more festive

Ok, so maybe that’s a bit more than minor tweaking. Here’s what I did:

Set the butter melting in a small pan on a low heat, and set the oven to 190C.

Bowl 1 – mixed together:

  • 1 cup (175gm) white rice flour
  • ½ cup blanched ground almonds
  • ⅛ teaspoon fine sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda, sifted
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar, sifted
  • 1 teaspoon mixed spice
  • sprinkling dehydrated orange peel (or use finely grated orange zest)

Then added: just under a cup of fresh blueberries. If you want to use frozen blueberries or cranberries, they must be completely defrosted first – or adapt the cooking time.

Bowl 2 – whisked together:

  • 56gm butter, melted and cooled (or 1/4 cup coconut oil)
  • ¼ cup lakanto maple flavoured syrup (or use pure maple syrup)
  • ⅓ cup unsweetened applesauce – I used baby apple as that was 100% apple and all other apple sauces had dodgy additives, or better still, make your own ahead of time (or can use 1 egg)
  • ½ cup unsweetened coconut (or nut) milk
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Added wet to dry and stirred just enough to mix. Spooned into a muffin tray lined with 10 silicon muffin molds. Baked at 190C for 20 mins, in the middle of the oven, turning halfway through. (The original recipe said 22-25 minutes.)

They weren’t quite a perfectly smooth as the original recipe but hot, they tasted good, the texture was nice and they didn’t need butter. Currently we’re waiting for them to cool down to see how they are cold, and tomorrow will see how they keep overnight. We’re traveling up to the Wairarapa on the train for Christmas Day, so will need a portable breakfast to keep us going till lunch. UPDATE: Yes, still moist and tasty the next day, so we can call this recipe a keeper.

Banana Chocolate Chip Blueberry muffins

The texture got me thinking of a recipe I used to make some 30 mumble years ago, before I was gluten free – my famous banana blueberry choc chip muffins. Really cake in muffin shape. The method of the two recipes is identical, and a lot of the ingredients are similar. Sometime, I’ll try replacing the apple sauce with mashed banana and adding chocolate chips, and I think this will be very close to the original.

I still have the original recipe, so here it is:

Preheat oven to 190C. Set the butter to melt in a small pan over a low heat.

Mix together in a biggish bowl:

  • 3/4 cup white flour
  • 3/4 cup wholemeal flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 heaped tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 heaped Tbs choc chips
  • 100g blueberries

Beat together in a smaller bowl:

  • 1 egg
  • 125gm raw sugar
  • 75g butter, melted and cooled slightly
  • 3 mashed bananas

Fold wet ingredients gently into dry. Grease the outer 10 of a 12 muffin pan – though these days I’d use silicon liners.  Spread mixture evenly between them. Bake for about 20-25 mins (longer if blueberries frozen).