A couple of posts ago there may have been a mention that the office was experimenting with paleo snacks. I should step back a bit – I work in a small office of 5 people onsite and 3 remote. Of those onsite some are now doing a paleo diet for the new year, and in an attempt to be supportive, the rest of the office has attempted to include snack items that were friendly to their cause.
After playing many rounds of “is that paleo?” and talking about it, the idea of making something seemed doable. Thus much Pinterest and googling ensued and resulted in a decision to use almond flour to attempt a muffin. This apparently ended up as the easy part.
Having almond meal on hand, I decided to read up on what was the difference and there was a lot! So to make meal finer (and easier to rise) before starting I decided to run it through my food processor first. Then I decided to figure out what to use for the rest and decided on raw orange blossom honey instead of sugar, coconut oil instead of butter, sea salt, soy free eggs (ok I admit I bought these solely for this), vanilla (because that makes anything better), strawberries and mint for flavor plus baking soda and some lemon juice (hoping to generate some rise to make it look like a muffin).
Letting my inner chemist go to town was definitely fun! Between all the warnings online that the muffins wouldn’t rise and store bought baking powder was a no-no due to cornstarch I was determined these would look muffiny (pretty sure that’s not a word).
Back to my food processor, which was now making a weird “kalump” noise, and it dawned on me – we were about to have almond butter!!! Oops! The nut meal was definitely moist looking, and in a moment of what I’ll say was brilliance others watching would have said panic, I dumped the lumpy mass into a skillet over med-low heat to try to toast/dry it a little.
Crisis kind of averted…back to our regular programming.
Rinsing the strawberries, removing their tops and hulling before dicing them up into small pieces (you can make them as big or small as you prefer in your muffin). I also washed out the food processor and ran the mint leaves through it. Then stirred the almond mass in the skillet (the bits that were drier looked much finer than what I’d poured from my bag so I’ll say semi-success).
Then I broke out the trusty stand mixer and beat the eggs, honey, coconut oil and vanilla together -which smelled awesome! The kitchen was smelling toasty (uh oh -almonds!) back to the stove and stirring. They seemed as good as they would get so I pulled them off the stove and poured into a large bowl. I also decided to turn on the oven to 350 degrees F.
Letting the almonds cool a little, I decided to line my muffin tin so it was ready to go.
Break time over… on with the experiment! I added salt to the almond stuff, and then added the baking soda and poured the lemon juice directly onto the baking soda (essentially just made a baking powder alternative) and watched it bubble (inner mad scientist was quite happy). Stirred the dry ingredients together to complete the process. Since I’d already cut the lemon, I squeezed some juice onto the strawberries just because I could. Stirred the strawberries a bit.
Now to add the dry to the mixer. I poured in the mix in batches (took about four to get all the dry mix in), and let the batter combine. It looked like liquid as if I just made some elaborate nut butter…
Well I’d come this far…just see it through. I never told anyone at the office I was doing this so no one would ever know if these were a complete debacle!
Adding the chopped mint to the strawberries and mixing with my hand, I then poured that into the mixer and stirred until just combined. Now to the muffin tin!
I ended up using a measuring cup to scoop because pouring looked messy. Filled the muffin wrappers about 3/4 full (some had more, others just made it above half). In theory this makes about 12. I placed the tin in the oven, crossed my fingers and set the timer for 25 minutes. After about 12 minutes I turned the oven light and peered through the glass and took a sigh of relief – there were rising little mounded top things staring back!!!
When the timer went off, I pulled out the pan and flipped it around, placing it back in for another 7 minutes because the fuller cups had not quite set (the less full cups were done and the ones that were filled just right for goldilocks were almost done).
After impatiently waiting, the timer chimed and out came muffins!!! Pulled them out of the tin and set them on a tray to cool. Then my usual test subject pilfered one, then another, so I had half of a third before he ate that too. The muffin was just slightly denser but moist from the strawberries and had a muffin top. Placed the rest of the muffins in a container and hid them so they would still exist to take to work. Experiment successful!
Strawberry Mint Muffins
- 2 1/2 C almond flour (or about 3 C meal run through a food processor)
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1 1/2 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
- 1/4 lemon
- 8-10 mint leaves
- 10 med/large strawberries
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 1/4 C honey
- 1/4 C coconut oil