Monday 3 February 2014

Grain Free Paleo Primal Chocolate Chip Cupcakes / Muffins

paleo chocolate banana muffinsThese are called cupcakes but I recon they're more of a muffin,  in fact locally they would be a "bun".  They're also called "chocolate banana", but everybody agreed you couldn't taste banana when baked, so don't let that put you off if you're not a fan.  Anyway they're a chocolatey cakey hit sans wheat monster.

I know from comments on the new Facebook group, some are totally new to grain free baking and might not be familiar with all the ingredients - so I've dropped links to help you identify what you're looking for.

I made a couple of adjustments to this receipe by Yummy Mummy, namely adding 1 tablespoon of lucuma powder and 1 dessert spoon of mesquite powder.  From raw chocolate making I find they help create more of a milk chocolate taste (lucuma tastes quite like a sweet milk starch and mesquite is sort of sweet smokey) - a lot of the grain free recipes I've tried result in super rich dense chocolate, so I fancied a change.  I also added a pinch of salt as all chocolate tastes better with a dash right?

This made the batter quite dry, so next time I will probably try a tablespoon of water/milk/virgin coconut oil - simply for ease of moving to baking cases.  They tasted amazing anyway and did rise, I was skeptical given it was more like a dough than batter by this point.

In the recipe it says to use a dropper of stevia or 2 extra tablespoons of honey.  If you use honey I think it would be worth adding an extra couple of tablespoons or so of almond flour, or another dessert spoon of coconut flour - as typically when subbing with honey the extra liquid needs to be offset to prevent a soggy middle. I used 2 1/2 tablespoons of Natvia and the lucuma also adds sweetness.

Lastly unlike lots of flour free recipes, these don't need a ton of eggs, just one - but if you're egg free this should work fine using a chia or flax egg - let me know how these taste if you try it out.

Ingredients:
3 very ripe bananas
2 tablespoons coconut oil or melted butter
1/3 cup honey or maple syrup
1 dropper of liquid stevia* (or 2 additional Tablespoons honey)
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup almond meal
¼ cup coconut flour
1/3 cup cacao powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips, plus 1 tablespoon, divided

Method: See how to make the cupcakes here.

1 comment:

  1. Hi - is there an alternative to coconut powder? I'm allergic!!

    ReplyDelete