Snow days! Two days off school leading up to a weekend, playing in the snow and lots of together time means baking time to keep everyone happy and satisfied.
Nora requested toasting bread for PBJ sandwiches. Anders requested blueberry muffins. But I knew that once Anders had blueberry muffins Nora would want blueberry muffins, so I pulled out The Joy of Gluten-Free, Sugar-Free Baking and tweaked their recipe for Blueberry Hazelnut Muffins to make everyone happy.
And oh. my. good. ness. They are so good!
I made one batch (below) and took out enough batter for 3 muffins for Nora, in pink and purple silicone muffin cups. Then I put a bit of sugar into the leftover batter for the rest of us and re-mixed, added in the blueberries, and put ours in yellow and green silicone cups. They are nutty delicious, either warm and cold.
I’m also sure that the original recipe using milk of any kind instead of heavy cream would also be very good. If you’re into that kind of thing.
Nutrition information for one Blueberry Almond Muffin, by www.caloriecount.com
Blueberry Almond Muffins
(makes 10 muffins)
90 g raw egg (2 eggs)
115 g (1/2 C) Organic Valley Heavy Whipping Cream
7 g (1.5 tsp) vanilla extract
5 g (1 tsp) lemon juice
85 g (3/4 C) Bob’s Red Mill hazelnut flour
85 g (3/4 C) Bob’s Red Mill almond meal/flour
30 g (1/4 C) slivered or sliced almonds
6 g (1 Tbsp) baking powder
3 g (1/4 tsp) salt
40 g frozen blueberries (1/4 cup, or more if diet allows)
Measure egg, cream, vanilla and lemon juice into mixer. If you want to add some liquid stevia or other carb-free sweetener, add it now as well. Mix thoroughly on low in electric mixer, or by hand.
In a separate bowl, combine nut flours, almonds, baking powder, and salt. If you want to add a powdered no-carb sweetener, add it here. Mix well. Add the dry ingredient mixture to the wet ingredients and mix on medium very well, one to two minutes. You want to beat a little air into it to fluff up your muffins. These ingredients are a lot of heavy lifting for the baking powder.
Measure 43 g of batter into each muffin cup. Then add 4 g of frozen blueberries to each cup, pushing them into the batter and smoothing over the top.
Bake at 350° for about 35 minutes or until golden brown on top and springy to the touch.
These are 2.17:1 ratio. Served with 25 g Organic Valley Heavy Cream plus 1 drop of vanilla flavoring and a thinned with a bit of water to make “milk” for a 3.5:1 ratio.
Now we are snowed in and need more baking supplies to make more of these! They will go too fast!
These muffins sound amazing. I have a bunch of walnuts stored from this past fall. Do you think they would be a worthy substitute for the almonds?
We had them for breakfast again with a quick re-heat in the microwave. Two 8 year old boys loved them too!
You can certainly substitute chopped walnuts for the slivered/sliced almonds. You could also make walnut meal in a food processor or clean coffee grinder to substitute for the hazelnut meals, but I would not recommend substituting it for the almond meal. Walnuts are 3:1 ratio on their own and add a lot more fat than the almonds, so I’m afraid that they will end up very heavy if you use them in place of almond meal. You can certainly try it and it will be delicious, but it will be less muffin-like.
I don’t have hazelnut flour but I do have coconut flour. Would that work if I added more liquid or egg? My son is on MAD.
Hi Holly, I’m not sure how that will work. The coconut flour is much finer and you are right that it will absorb more liquid. I don’t think it will be a direct substitution. You might have to experiment.
Search our blog for the raspberry coconut cupcakes. They are very good too–pretty much a muffin if you don’t frost it! And I know that works with coconut flour and have been taste-tested by gluten-free friends who remember what regular muffins taste like 🙂
Bob’s Red Mill makes a hazelnut flour, which is why I use it. I’m not into grinding my own flours unless I have to.
These were really good! I added 1/2T Swerve to the batter and used only almond flour without any other nuts. Really yummy!
Hi Christy,
What is your choice of sweetener if not Stevia? My daughter is not Keto but is recommended and I am trying to ease her into low-pressure-low carb first:-)
She has sensory processing issues, so any aftertaste would be a turn off but also doesn’t go for the completely unsweet flavor. Is she a hopeless case? Ugh
Hi Julianna,
I know what you mean by the off-taste, especially the aftertaste. You might just have to try some. In my experience, you don’t need as much sweetener when you are working with nut flours and fruits in your baked goods because they have a naturally sweeter taste than plain old wheat flour. So that’s a starting point. I often did not put any sweetener in this k ind of baked goods when she was fully into the diet because her sense of sweetness also changed a lot.
You might try Erythritol or Xylitol and see what you think. Sugar alcohols such as those are commonly used in no-carb commercial products (like diabetic friendly candy and such), so many people must think that they taste better than other options. I would avoid artificial sweeteners.
It does take time to change our “taste” for sweetness though, don’t expect overnight acceptance of less-sweet treats. If you are easing in, you might just dial it down a bit at a time. You might cut down on the sweetener in a recipe or make one of these and add 1/2 cup sugar or honey and a bit of no-carb sweetener and see what she thinks. If that is acceptable, substitute more no-carb sweetener the next time or decrease the sugar, and so on. Even our son (who was never on a low-carb diet) began to say that commercial frostings were too sweet after he started eating our homemade lower-sugar treats. (But now that he’s a teenager, all bets are off!)
Good luck.
Christy