Sugar Free, Gluten Free Anytime Muffins

Lately I have felt as though the fun has been sucked out of the kitchen...read labels, bake food I really don't like, and never produce a product that looks perfect anymore. I don't experiment with my own recipes because wasting gluten free ingredients is seriously a crime! But finally I am starting to feel drawn back in. What changed? I started *gasp* buying bread! I finally found a wonderful gf bread recipe that even I liked to eat on a regular basis, but then I found Kinnikinnik....their bread is soft, bouncy, good texture and tastes good. And the best part is that it's less then a $1 more per loaf for me to buy then it is for me to bake (and that's not including my time or the electricity to turn the oven on!). I'm so excited! Plus I've found that Safeway carries their bread, frozen but I'm ok with that! So it's not only good tasting, it's somewhat convenient too. So I've had a few weeks away from baking, I've been gleefully opening bags of bread from the freezer and the sense of fun that the kitchen used to offer me is returning.
Tonight my hubby called me a 'whirlwind' in the kitchen, and it felt good. It's been a long time since I have been busy enough to warrant being called that! What was I making?

Super healthy eat anytime muffins!! Courtesy of Mennonite Girls Can Cook (my new favourite website!!)
They are sugar free, gluten free and packed full of good for you things!

I did not change anything in the recipe except to use ground flax seed and I made them as muffin tops because...well why not? :)

INGREDIENTS
3/4 Cup Almond Flour (meal)
3/4 Cup Brown Rice Flour
1/2 Cup Xylitol
1/2 Tsp. Baking Soda
1/2 Tsp. Baking Powder
1/2 Tsp. Ginger
1/2 Tsp. Cinnamon
1/2 Tsp. Salt
1/2 Cup Old Fashioned Rolled Oats (GF)
1/2 Cup Steel Cut Oats (GF)
1/4 Cup Flax Seed
1/2 Cup Raisins
3 Tbsp. Oil
1 Large Egg
1/3 Cup Milk (or almond milk etc)
4 Medium Carrots, Shredded
1 Medium Ripe Banana, Mashed

Prehead oven to 400F. Coat a 12 Cup muffin pan with oil (I used coconut oil, it works great!)
Whisk together flours, xylitol, baking soda, baking powder, spices, oats and flax until there are no lumps. Stir in raisins.
Mix oil, egg, milk, carrots and banana in another bowl. Add to flour mixture and stir until blended.

Fill each muffin cup 3/4 full. Bake until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. 23-25 minutes (depending on your size of pan). Serve warm or at room temperature. To store keep in an airtight container, up to 3 days.
Great with some butter, some cream cheese or drizzle honey on top!


NOTE: I did find that my steel cut oats were still kind of crunchy in the finished product. I think next time I will mix up the liquid ingredients first, add the steel cut oats and let them soak while I measure and mix the dry ingredients/shred the carrots :)

Grapefruit

Of course everyone knows how to eat a grapefruit :) but did you know you can make it into a healthy 'dessert' easily? I know its tasty on its own but sometimes a craving for something dessert/snack-like comes along.

Peel the grapefruit and remove the chunks into a bowl. Sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg over top of the pieces. Add a small amount of sugar or a sugar substitute (I used xylitol). Its a tasty, healthy refreshing snack. One you dont need to feel guilty about having if you are trying to lose weight!
Its not really a pretty dish so I never thought to take a picture :)

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New Pantry Items!

I got to escape the house this afternoon without my two kids since my mother in law is here, and I got to go into stores and actually *gasp* take my time looking at things! Bulk Barn is one of my new favourite stores. Not because it's always cheaper, because it's not (although sometimes they are!), but because you can try so many new things without committing to spending a fortune and ending up with a huge bag that you will never use.
My experimental purchases of the day:
Organic Coconut Sugar It has an interesting less sweet then sugar taste and is less bad for you. It actually contains some good for you things :)
Arrowroot Powder To try as a substitute for corn starch
Steel Cut Oats To grind in my new grain grinder Kitchen Aid attachment that I'm geeking out about and dying to try out!
Hard Wheat For the same reason as above!
Chickpeas Because I'm going to try out a new recipe I found :)

Then I went to Earth's General Store. If you remember I bought a LivingSocial spend $10 get $20 for  a store gift certificate. It was great, I didn't have to print it out or anything. I have a smartphone, and I have the LivingSocial App, and I just pulled up the certificate on it and she put the info into the computer and that was it!! The store has moved and it is quite a bit larger now. They have everything from bulk shampoo (but you have to bring your own container so I didn't get any of that), to a small produce section and pretty much everything inbetween. I spent quite awhile in there. I had to spend all $20 at once, but I didn't want to spend a ton over so I just got a few things.

Xylitol I need to do more reading so I just got a bit, but it can replace sugar, has fewer calories and actually has health benefits!! We tasted it and it has a hard to place taste. The best description is that it tastes 'cold'. It's very different!
Xantham Gum I'm going to experiment with my granola bar recipe!
Amazing Dad's Original BBQ Sauce I'm going to go by the ingredients (since I can actually understand what they all are!) and try to make my own, this one is a little sweet for our tastes.
Organic Vinegar For a starter for my homemade vinegar project that I want to start!
Daiya 'Cheese' This one is for my mother in law. She can't eat a lot of fat for health reasons, and can't buy fat free cheese in Canada. She lives near the US border and gets it from there, but when she comes to visit she never gets to have anything with cheese! This is a very low fat cheese alternative. Great for people who can't have dairy. And it actually doesn't taste all that weird, which totally surprised me! It has a 'different' taste to it, but not bad. We haven't tried to melt any yet, but apparently it actually melts and strings like cheese.

I'm ready to start experimenting with my recipes and see what happens! Hopefully I'll have some results to post about in the next couple of days :)

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