Almond Flour Chocolate Muffins

 

 

          Mondayzzz! I decided I should start this week with something sweet & delicious, but also guilt & gluten free. In part, this recipe takes inspiration in the project initiated by the nice people at Nuts.com advocating the benefits of almonds consumption. Their page dedicated to almond products, it’s more than any mortal can take. I love almonds, almond milk, almond butter, almond flour… anything with almond flavor, I just love it! Besides being delicious, almonds are a great source of essential oils, protein, calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium and vitamins E, B2, B3, B6… Now you know why I’ve experimented with almonds/ almond flour and even made my own almond milk a number of times (it’s 100 times better than anything you can buy) and this time I am really excited to come up with something new, easy to make (great “bake with kids” project), scrumptious, but also healthy.

 

 

          The muffins recipes I am about to tell you about can be adapted to a flourless brownie recipe and served with a mixed berries warm sauce. I used to make these flourless blueberry muffins at least once a week, they were our favorite breakfast (still are). Since I first made the recipe I wondered what would happen if instead of baking soda, I use baking powder…or both. Still, for convenience I always followed the recipe and used baking soda.. why try to fix something if it’s not broken. Well, with this new recipe I decided to experiment and you’re about to see what happened! 😀

 

 

          Ok, so these are the ingredients…baking soda did not make it to the final cut, and you’re about to find out why. You will also find the ingredients bolded below. 

 

          How to make 6 almond flour & chocolate muffins:

Preheat the oven at 350 F/ 180 C.

Puree 1 banana, add 1 tbsp almond butter and whisk them together until smooth.

Add 2 tsp carob powder (make sure there are no lumps) and ½ tsp cocoa powder and continue whisking.

Add one drop of almond extract (optional) and 3 tbsp agave syrup and whisked them all together.

Using a small sauce pan, melt 2 tablets (about 50 gr.) dark chocolate (I used 70%) with 4 tsp coconut oil.

 

 

          Add the melted chocolate to the banana and almond butter mix and stir well. Now add 6 tbsp almond flour (in the first version I only used 5, but 6 it’s better) and stir until all the ingredients are incorporated and the “batter” is smooth.

 

 

          Add 1 tsp baking powder and mix for the last time. Divide the batter between 6 muffin cups (or muffin pan) and bake for 20 minutes.

 

 

          Enjoy them with a cup of tea/ coffee! For extra fanciness you can serve them with a sauce of blueberries or a serving of fresh berries.

 

          Now let me tell you a little story about a little girl who learned that she shouldn’t use baking soda when she’s baking muffins with almond flour and no eggs…

          For the first batch of almond flour chocolate muffins I made, I used both baking soda and baking powder.

          First the batter was really fluffy and I got really excited:

 

          Then I got the muffins out of the oven:

 

          really tasty, but not so hot looking!

          So, I decided to redo the recipe and to separate the batter in two equal parts in order to find out once and for all which is the best raising agent: the baking soda or the baking powder??!!

          And this is what came out of my little experiment… just DON’T USE BAKING SODA, for these muffins!:D

 

 

          P.S. When I was very little I used to eat a lot of apricot kernel and I somehow concluded that almonds must be peach kernel. I’ve spent a couple of summers with my grandparent at their house in a small village, hoping that at last the only peach they had would make some fruit and I could break the seed and find the delicious almond. Eventually my mother told me that there was no Santa Claus and that almonds grow in trees like walnuts do… Needless to say, I was devastated! 😀

          Enjoy your muffins and have an awesome week!

 

 

 

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