JACKPOT bakes gluten free paleo carrot cake muffins

Hello dear readers!

Happy Wednesday! Wednesday means it’s time for a new recipe post. Sorry for the delay in posting but it’s been another busy week and after all the birthday celebrations, I have come down with the cold and flu so have been trying to overcome the sickness despite lacking quite a bit of sleep.

I baked some gluten-free paleo carrot cake muffins for Mr Muscles last week for his birthday. Mr Muscles loves carrot cake so I knew I wanted to bake carrot cake and I thought why not make them into muffins as then he could share them with all his friends and workmates on his birthday. I searched on the net for a few recipes as I’m only starting to bake paleo as I can see a new trend towards this and more and more people seem to be interested in eating paleo. I found this recipe at Multiply Delicious (http://www.multiplydelicious.com/thefood/2011/08/gluten-free-carrot-muffins/) and adapted the recipe from this. I wanted to bake the muffins using my natural blanched almond meal so I just subbed this in for the almond flour in the recipe instead. Mr Muscles put these on a plate for his co-workers to try and he told me that once he went back to the kitchen, they were all gone. Always a good sign when a plate full of muffins disappears in no time at all. I can safely assume that his coworkers enjoyed the muffins. Mr Muscles even checked the rubbish bin to see whether anyone had chucked out the muffins but upon inspection, he noted that there were no appearances of muffins in the bin. I’m definitely going to keep trying different paleo recipes to mix things up a bit and Mr Muscles seemed to really like the muffins so I was more than happy that they were enjoyed by the birthday boy himself =).

Gluten Free Paleo Carrot Cake Muffins (adapted from Multiply Delicious)

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups of natural blanched almond meal
• 1/2 tsp of baking soda
• 1-2 tsps of cinnamon (I like the taste of cinnamon in carrot cake so I added a lot more) + additional cinnamon for the topping
• pinch of sea salt
• 3 free range eggs
• 2 tbsps of organic coconut oil
• 1 ripe banana mashed with a fork
• 1/3 cup of pure maple syrup (I used more maple syrup as my banana wasn’t that ripe and I was scared that the muffins wouldn’t be sweet enough)
• 3 medium-sized carrots grated
• 1/2 cup of walnuts broken into pieces

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Line your muffin tray with muffin cups and set aside.
3. In a large bowl, combine all your dry ingredients together: almond meal, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together and set aside.
4. In another bowl, mix your wet ingredients: eggs, oil, mashed banana and maple syrup and whisk until combined.
5. Add in your grated carrots and walnuts into the wet ingredients mixture until just combined.
6. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.
7. Using an ice-cream scoop or a large spoon, fill up your muffin cups 3/4 full and then add a bit of cinnamon to the top of each muffin.
8. Bake your muffins for around 25 minutes.
9. Take your muffins out of the pan and let them cool on a wire rack.
10. Enjoy!

I think the banana really helped with keeping the muffins moist. The muffin itself is packed full of goodness with the bananas, carrots and the almond meal. I think this muffin is perfect for a hearty filling breakfast or a small snack on the go. I’m definitely going to try and tweak this recipe a bit more. I was a bit concerned at one stage because I thought I had put in too much carrot as the mixture was very orange but luckily it didn’t affect the end product. My only qualm about this recipe was how long it took to grate the carrots. I didn’t realise how long it takes to grate one carrot let alone three carrots and by the end of it, I think I had covered most my benchtop in orange grated carrot as some of it kept falling over the bowl and after all that grating,  I really felt I got a good workout done in the process. I love using almond meal as well especially when I’m making banana bread or banana muffins. If you weren’t doing the whole paleo diet thing, I’m pretty sure you could sub the almond meal with spelt flour or wholemeal flour, obviously bearing in mind the texture would be a bit different but I’m sure still tasty nonetheless ;p

So dear readers, what’s your favourite type of cake? Are you a carrot cake lover like Mr Muscles? Happy to hear some comments from all of you! =)

Until next time!

x

Jackie