Forays Into The Dark Side: Gluten Free Morning Glory Muffins

For my (FINAL!!!) presentation at school I wanted to make something for my group members to snack on while they listened to me talk for 45 minutes. I also wanted to make something that I could actually eat, which meant it needed to be gluten and dairy-free and reasonably healthy so I could fit it into my nutrition plan somewhere.

As a baker, I have always believed that 1) "butter makes it better" and 2) gluten-free baking is a pain and pretty much never worth it. That being said, as the realization that for the foreseeable future I'll be eating entirely gluten-free and mostly dairy-free, I figured this was a good opportunity to buy the weird ingredients and take a crack at real GF-baking. (I have done a fair amount of incidental GF-baking in the past when the substitution of non-wheat flours doesn't affect the final product too much, but I'd classify all of that under the healthy-baking-for-post-workout-snack category more than "real" baking that I share with other people.)

I have always loved the Morning Glory muffins from Whole Foods and when I stumbled across a GF recipe, I figured it was a good place to start. With a solid base of carrots, zucchini, apple, raisins, toasted coconut and toasted walnuts, there are so many delicious things going on with these muffins. The "weird" ingredients in this recipe are quinoa flour, tapioca starch, potato starch and xantham gum. Whole Foods had xantham gum but none of the other ingredients, but Harvest Co-op came through with quinoa flour (available in bulk so I only had to buy 1 cup), arrowroot starch (in place of tapioca starch), and potato starch. I had to buy whole containers of both starches and the xantham gum, so I guess there's more GF-baking in my future (any Cambridge or Boston friends who want to try any of these ingredients out but don't want to buy whole bags of them - hit me up!)

The batter came together fine, though was definitely STICKY, and a bit strange in texture. However, through the magic of baking (it really does feel like sorcery sometimes), the muffins themselves came out delicious! Light and fluffy and moist. Everyone in my group (even the other student who is a regular baker) were surprised to hear they were GF, so I'll take that as a good sign.

Link to recipe on Whole Foods' website.

Whole Foods' lovely picture of these muffins, though I have to say (and will credit the quality of the recipe for this, not my mad skillz, that my muffins looked pretty much the same):