Basic Almond Flour Muffins & Variations - Grain-Free, Sugar-Free & Gluten-Free

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Long time no post. I have been a little busy -- you see, Mr. Dreamy and I were married last weekend and that has had a lot of my attention lately (look to the end of this post for a photo) Hope you understand, now back to regular posting :)

Muffins -- I love them! As a low carber, I avoided them for a long time - then I wanted to add them back into my diet and have tried and developed a lot of different recipes. But something always was a little lacking. In my prior life I had a wonderful basic muffin recipe that was the base of all the *flavored* muffins in my bag of tricks -- THAT was what I wanted.

So I set out to create that basic recipe and a few variations. 

Basic Almond Flour Muffins 


2 cups almond flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
4 eggs
1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk
1/3 cup granulated sweetener (I used Swerve) 
liquid Stevia

Preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare a 12-muffin tin by buttering or spraying with non-stick spray. In a mixing bowl, combine almond flour, baking powder, salt, and granulated sweetener. Mix well. In a smaller mixing bowl beat eggs and add in almond milk, melted butter and liquid Stevia. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix thoroughly. Scoop batter into tin and bake for about 20 minutes or until lightly browned and done. Makes 12 muffins. Each serving is 200 calories, 4.37g carbs, 2g fiber = 2.37g net carbs.

Variations:

Blueberry Muffins

3/4 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Add blueberries to dry ingredients. Net carbs per muffin = 3.13g
Almond-Poppyseed Muffins

1 Tbsp poppy seeds
2-1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 cup sliced almonds 

Add poppy seeds in with dry ingredients, extract in with wet. Divide the almonds evenly onto the 12 muffins and bake and instructed above. Net carbs per muffin = 2.94g
Cranberry Orange-Nut Muffins

1/2 c chopped fresh (or frozen) cranberries
1/2 tsp orange extract
1 Tbsp orange zest
1/4 c finely chopped walnuts

Add cranberries, and zest to dry ingredients and extract to wet. Divide chopped walnuts between muffin tops prior to baking. Bake per above directions. Net carbs per muffin = 2.88g


Lemon-Poppyseed Muffins

1/4 tsp baking soda
Zest of 1 lemon
omit almond milk
juice of 1 lemon
1 Tbsp poppyseeds

Add poppy seeds in with dry ingredients, juice in with wet. Bake as instructed above. Net carbs per muffin = 2.76g

I have been working on this post for months and we have tried all these variations many times -- in fact, I had to whip up a batch of the blueberry ones today as I was finishing up the post because I couldn't find my photos, lol. I tell you this to stress how simple and simply yummy these are. Hope you enjoy them too. Look for more variations soon!

And I couldn't resist -- here is a photo from the wedding. Silly but I was pretty over-the-mood that day and am pretty over-the-moon in love with this man!! Thanks for indulging me!!


By Stephanie Lynn