Tag Archives: Baking

Other People’s Recipes: Paleo Friendly Ginger Carrot Muffins

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I’ve had a yen for ginger muffins since reading a recipe in the paleo book that my alternative medicine practitioner recommended. That recipe had too many eggs and not enough ‘flour’ to be anything close to a real muffin.

Internet to the rescue. I found two recipes that I thought might make a decent muffin, both based on almond flour. Blending the recipes, I came up with this list of ingredients:

  • 2 cups almond flour
  • 2 TBSP coconut flour
  • ¼ tsp allspice
  • ½ tsp ginger
  • ¼ tsp nutmeg
  • ½ tsp cinnamon
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 3 large eggs
  • 2 TBSP melted butter (replacing the coconut oil both recipes called for)
  • 2 TBSP unsulfured molasses
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 cup grated carrots
  • ¼ cup dried cranberries (replacing the raisins optional in both recipes)

The method is what you’d except. Mix the wet ingredients (starting at eggs) with the dry ingredients. Bake in a 350-degree oven for 20-25 minutes.

I used parchment paper tin liners and, unlike the sticky blueberry muffins, these came clean out of the papers.  They tasted—a lot—like the zucchini muffins I used to buy at Whole Foods. Maybe a tad too sweet. When I make them again, I’ll reduce the maple syrup by half.

As for nutritional–or at least calorie–information, I tried using the calculator at Spark, but it was clunky at best. None of the recipes provided nutritional information. Again, Internet to the rescue. I did find calorie counts for a couple of similar Paleo muffin recipes–225 per muffin.

I froze half the tin for a day when I need a treat.

Other People’s Recipes: Blueberry Muffins

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I wanted a Paleo-friendly recipe for blueberry muffins. Something different for breakfast. What I didn’t want was some banana-y or eggy batter interspersed with blueberries. I was bound to be disappointed.

The recipe I ended up with called for:

  • 6 eggs
  • ½ cup melted butter
  • ¼ cup maple syrup
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
  • ½ cup coconut flour
  • ¼ cup tapioca flour
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ½ tsp baking soda
  • 1 cup fresh blueberries

Like most muffins, mix wet with wet and dry with dry, then put the two together, mix till just incorporated, then fill your muffin tin. Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes.

Easy to make, despite the frantic search for parchment paper muffin tin liners. And the muffins were edible. Barely. They had a decidedly eggy taste. Cavepeople must’ve been very hungry to enjoy them. And, despite the special tin liners, they had to be scraped out.

After that experience, I went back to the Internet and looked at other blueberry muffin recipes that didn’t call for bananas. All of them had a high egg content—and I have to question where the cavepeople got all those eggs—but most started with 2 cups of almond flour.

Oh. Well yes. That would help.

I’m looking for a cinnamon-spice muffin next. I wonder if cavepeople ate raisins.

Two-Ingredient Bagels

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I don’t often talk about cooking or baking. I can follow a recipe and that’s about it. But I love watching cooking shows, and every so often, I get inspired. Like seeing someone make a breakfast sandwich in 45 minutes, including scratch, two ingredient- bagels.

Two-ingredient bagels? Really?

Having grown-up on the east coast, I was used to eating ‘real’ bagels. Then I moved to Omaha, NE, ending up in Louisburg, KS. I don’t know how they make bagels out here, or whether they’ve ever tasted real one. The best tasting are huge, fluffy donut-shaped bread things. But they’re not bagels.

Real bagels are made with yeast. I tried to make a real bagel once. Lots of steps. Proofing, boiling, baking. Mine came out rubbery.

But the two-ingredient bagel? It’s simple. According to Weight Watchers, mix 1 cup of
fat-free Greek yogurt with 1 cup of self-rising flour. The recipe I ended up using called for 1 ¾ self-rising flour and 1 cup of full fat Greek yogurt.

Mix the two ingredients until a dough forms, then knead briefly. Divide into four equal pieces. Roll each piece into a log-like shape, then squeeze the two ends together. I brushed the resulting four bagels with beaten egg and baked for 25 minutes in a
350 Fahrenheit oven.

I know. Mine don’t look much like bagels. In fact, they’re messy and not at all consistent. I’m no baker. But believe it or not, these had the same chewy consistency as a real, NY bagel. Go figure… Better yet, go try to make one.