I really love Gluten Free Girl. To be honest, before I met her at IFBC 2010 I thought she was a bit of a food snob. One more reason I need to stop judging people before I meet them! :-) I'm so glad I had the opportunity to meet her! Shauna is a gem. She has an incredible hug and even more incredible heart for people. Her laughter --a joy to hear, her boots red, and her smile is warm & inviting.
I truly enjoy her writing & her blog. One thing I love about reading blogs is that you get to watch as the seasons change, as writers evolve, as their food changes.
Shauna has recently decided to stop using white sugar in their home. She's using more natural choices such as sucanat, date sugar, coconut/palm sugar, etc... She's also using more whole grains and she's cutting gums out of her baked goods.
I absolutely love all of these changes. They cater to my own natural & healthy food choices and I'm excited about the new possibilities in Shauna's baked goods. I'm eagerly awaiting her gluten free yeast bread that doesn't contain gums!
Last night I tried her whole grain muffins.
The muffins don't use xanthan gum or guar gum. The first thing I loved about them! Shauna also uses a 70% whole grains and 30% starches for this recipe. She tells you how to make your own personalized gluten free whole grain mix and then shares a basic recipe template. She wants you to play. She wants you to start thinking off the page.
Recipes are simply the outline, the basic idea of what you can make. It's up to you to make them unique. To use what you have available. To be creative and inspired.
The muffins we made last night used a combination of almond flour, sorghum flour, brown rice flour, quinoa flour (I love the taste of quinoa with cinnamon & raisins!), arrowroot starch, and ground flax seeds. As Shauna stated, you'll probably never make the same muffins twice! That's certainly the case at our house. For the add in's we used about 1/4 of raisins (which cleaned out my stash of raisins) and a handful of sliced almonds. Apparently my chopped walnuts & pecans have hidden themselves in the freezer beyond my reach.
Since I'm watching my calorie intake I calculated that basically my overall recipe (including the amount of sugar & oil used in the original recipe) had 3693 calories. I was able to make 18 muffins from the batter, which means each muffin had about 205 calories. Overall, not bad! Plus, the health benefits of these whole grain muffins is substantial. I love that our version contained healthy proteins & fats with the almond flour + quinoa flour + ground flax seeds.
To reduce the calories in my next batch, I'll probably use a bit less sugar and replace half the oil with applesauce or pumpkin puree.
I was thrilled when I caught my husband (who generally isn't a huge fan of baked goods) packing 3 muffins in a plastic bag to take to work with him today. As I munched on my muffins for breakfast this morning, I was pleasantly surprised at how moist they were.
Do you enjoy muffins? What you would you include in your 70/30 gluten free whole grain mix? If you need some inspiration, here are a few of my favorite muffin recipes and most of them are whole grain:
- Gluten Free Whole Grain Banana Nut Muffins
- Gluten Free Streusel-Topped Blueberry Muffins
- Gluten Free, Whole Grain Vegan Banana Bread - easily made into muffins!
- Gluten Free Carob Banana Muffins
- Gluten Free Vegan Dark Chocolate Muffins
- Gluten Free Ginger Lemon Muffins
- Gluten Free Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
- Gluten Free Orange Cinnamon Muffins
