Have Fun With Your Food: Gluten Free Quinoa Blueberry Muffins

Gluten Free Quinoa Blueberry Muffins.  Odd combo huh?  My first foray into gluten free baking and I lobbed a grenade, what can I say, and just prayed it landed in the edible range.

And hey, not only did they come out edible, they came out dense, cakey and have some nutritional value on top of being a baked good.  So, I wanted to share it :).  Remember, when you stop playing with your food life gets awful boring!  Enjoy it!

Gluten Free Quinoa Blueberry Muffins

• 2/3 Cup Brown Rice Flour
• 2/3 Cup Almond Meal
• 1/4 Cup Arrowroot powder (for the life of me I couldn't find my tapioca starch)
• 2/3 Cup cooked and well drained quinoa, cooled (this would be a great use for leftovers, just make sure it's not savory flavored or anything :).
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/3 cup sugar (can go up to 1/2 cup if your applesauce isn't very sweet)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup cinnamon applesauce (or use regular applesauce and add like 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon)
• 1/2 Cup buttermilk (or 1 tsp lemon juice added to a measuring cup and then filled with milk to the 1/2 cup line).
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. lemon zest
• 1 Cup Frozen Blueberries

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

2.  Mix rice flour, almond meal, arrowroot powder, baking powder,  and salt in a bowl.  In another bowl mix sugar and egg and mix until well incorporated.  Add quinoa, applesauce buttermilk and lemon zest.  Mix well to combine.  Make a well in the dry ingredients and dump wet ingredients in.  Mix until just combined and then fold in blueberries.

3.  Put in muffin tins (each tin should be about 2/3 of the way full) that are WELL greased (I used non-stick spray and these STILL stuck on me). 

4.  Cook in a 350 degree oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until brown around the edges and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  These are totally delicious warm.  Nice and cakey and not grainy.  Yum!

I baked at a lower temp because with the almond meal in these they could burn easily and burned nut meals taste nothing but bad.  Just keep that in mind if you get impatient :).

Sorry I didn't make these dairy free and more allergy friendly, but I just wasn't willing to try my hand at doing that much messing with recipes just yet. Enjoy!