Paleo cinnamon muffins

I have fallen in love with a new blog called Elana's pantry. It is a paleo blog with awesome recipes that use simple ingredients. 

http://www.elanaspantry.com/cinnamon-bun-muffins/

I have tweaked this recipe in a few areas, however the original recipe is absolutely fantastic as well, and I highly reccomend the blog!

 

These are gluten-free Paleo cinnamon muffins. 

And these are the ingredients. Coconut flour, almond flour, ground flax, salt, eggs, baking soda, vanilla, coconut oil, and agave syrup or honey. A little tip, almond flour is also known as ground almonds. And you can buy it in the baking or spice aisle at superstore. If you plan on making this recipe legitimately gluten-free, you may choose not to do that. Then I would suggest buying products that are certified gluten-free. Especially spices and bulk baking products such as ground almonds carry a high likelihood of cross-contamination with other flours or spices that may contain gluten. I don't have celiac disease, so for my situation I am able to get the cheap stuff!

Anyway, start by combating your dry ingredients. I packed my almond flour slightly, and my coconut flour. Add your baking soda salt and flax meal to this. I did find the end results tasted a bit of baking  soda, however I do not know how baking powder would do in this recipe. I am not too well-versed in gluten-free flours to know if an adjustment like this would affect the leavening of these muffins. With regular flour it would not be an issue.

Next melt your coconut oil in a one cup measure, and add to it your agave nectar or honey. I chose to use agave nectar, because it has less of a flavor, and I have a huge bottle of it that I need to use up. Honey is actually quite a bit sweeter than agave nectar as well. I did find this recipe was not very sweet, so replacing agave with honey will not spoil the recipe. Personally, I enjoyed that these muffins are not terribly sweet, since I am generally a salty food person anyway. Don't worry these muffins are not salty, they are just not overly sweet. In fact they are quite healthy. They could actually count as a serving of protein rather than carbs considering the number of eggs and almonds inside of them.

Add your remaining wet ingredients to your coconut oil and sweetener, and mix well. Then add this wet mixture to your dry ingredients. You should have something that resembles cake batter.

Divide the mix into nine muffin cups. I lined mine with a parchment muffin cups from sobeys, however they really did not stick at all and I think any paper liners would do.

Next we will make the cinnamon sauce for topping the muffins. In the original recipe, she makes her syrup ahead of time. However I changed the oil to coconut oil to make it a bit healthier. When this sauce cools off, it becomes very sludge like from the coconut oil. Even when reheating it it maintained this consistency. When made fresh and warm the sauce was liquidy. So to save you the hardship of trying to split-up gooey booger sauce, make this sauce at the end not the beginning!

Measure out your coconut oil, agave nectar, cinnamon, and vanilla into a microwave safe bowl.

Heat until the coconut oil is melted, and mix thoroughly.

You can see how my sauce stayed in big gooey lumps because I waited until the sauce had cooled off to pour it over my muffins. Spoon this over your muffins while it is warm.

You may choose to take a toothpick to swirl the sauce into your muffins, however my gooey booger sauce would not mix very well. I just left it on top.

Bake at 350° for 12 minutes or until they look like this. They should also pass the clean toothpick test. 

And that is it! Doesn't this look delicious? I ate three as soon as they came out of the oven ha ha! At least it was lunchtime, and they are actually quite healthy. Anyways, enjoy!

Paleo gluten-free cinnamon muffins

1 cup slightly packed almond flour

2 tbsp slightly packed coconut flour

2 tbsp flax meal

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup agave nectar (or honey)

1/4 cup coconut oil melted

1 tbsp vanilla

3 eggs

Glaze:

1 Tbsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla

2 Tbsp agave nectar (or honey)

1 tbsp coconut oil melted

Combine dry ingredients. Melt coconut oil and mix with wet ingredients. Combine wet and dry ingredients and divide into 9 lined muffin tins. 

Melt second measure of coconut oil with cinnamon, vanilla, and agave. stir well and divide glaze equally onto nine muffins. If you desire, use a tooth pick to swirl the cinnamon through your muffins, however they will turn out fine if you leave the glaze on top as well. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes.  Cool 10 minutes before removing from pan.