Carrot Cake Muffins (gluten-free, egg-free, nut-free, vegan)

Yay for gluten-free carrot cake muffins! I call these healthy little treats muffins, but once frosted they sure seem like cupcakes to me. They are packed full of carrot-goodness, as well as being very moist and light, even without the eggs. What a perfect treat for Mother's day or a Springtime gathering!

I've frosted them here using a Honey-Cream Cheese Frosting (recipe below) but if you are dairy-free or vegan then use my Sweet Potato Buttercream Frosting recipe. Just be sure to use white-fleshed sweet potatoes (they have a light-tan skin), and stir in some finely grated orange zest at the end. This recipe is a perfect dairy-free, whole foods replacement for cream cheese frosting (and it looks like it too as long as you use the white sweet potatoes).

The trick to making these egg-free muffins light and fluffy is to add the carrots on top of the whisked dry ingredients, immediately then pour in the blended wet ingredients, and then mix them all together at once. If you stir in the carrots at the end, after your batter has been mixed up, then you will lose some of the trapped air that is formed from the reactions of the baking powder, baking soda, and acid ingredients (applesauce and orange juice). Then you must bake them right away in your preheated oven. Starting the baking process immediately after mixing the batter together helps to trap air and create lift! Both of these steps will help give the muffins the rise and lightness you normally get with eggs.

If you want to add other ingredients such as chopped walnuts and raisins, go ahead. A half cup of each should work well. Also....did I mention that these muffins are Elimination Diet friendly for Phase 2 and beyond (without the cream cheese frosting and citrus of course)! Enjoy!

Chocolate Cupcakes with Creamy Yam Frosting (grain-free, gluten-free, dairy-free)

I thought these healthy gluten-free chocolate cupcakes with bright orange frosting looked quite festive for halloween. You could even offer them to your children in exchange for their candy loot! My children normally go trick-or-treating and then come back home and give most of their candy away to the last of the trick-or-treaters. Oh what joy they have in doing this! Then they put whatever remaining candy they have next to their bed and in the middle of the night the hungry candy gnome comes to take it away. In exchange he leaves them some healthy treats like pomegranates, herbal tea bags, and oranges. Seriously, my children think pomegranates ARE candy and are absolutely thrilled to each have their own left by a mysterious candy gnome! If you plan on using this tradition with your children, it is best to start when they are young.

Grain-Free Cupcakes with Vegan Coconut Frosting

These gorgeous chocolate-banana-honey grain-free cupcakes are from Elana Amsterdam's latest cookbook, Gluten-Free Cupcakes: 50 Irresistible Recipes Made with Almond and Coconut Flour. If you are looking for simple, healthy grain-free cupcake recipes, this is the book to turn to. All but one of the cupcake recipes contain eggs. It isn't easy creating grain-free recipes without using a lot of eggs. There are also a bunch of healthy frosting recipes to choose from, many of them being dairy-free.

My children love flipping through her book picking out the recipes they want me to make.....which is all of them I think! I love that all of Elana's recipes contain very few ingredients and can be made in a snap! Be sure to check out her blog too if you haven't already.

Although I can't share the recipe photographed above, I wanted to mention that I have substituted honey for the agave nectar called for in this recipe with great results. This particular recipe as well as many others are made with coconut flour. Great for those of you who are nut-free. I do have another recipe to share from the book that I think you'll like. And if you are interested in winning a signed copy of this book, please leave a comment below.

If you are interested in checking out another recipe in this book before purchasing it, you can read my friend Shirley's review from last April where she shares Elana's Marble Cupcakes.

Grain-Free Pumpkin Cupcakes

After multiple failed attempts to create a grain-free, nut-free, refined sugar-free cupcake recipe I finally got it! We couldn't decide whether or not to call these muffins or cupcakes.....so when frosted they are cupcakes and when plain they are muffins. I sweeten these little treats using pureed medjool dates. Combined with the coconut flour, they taste fairly sweet!

I have found that different brands of coconut flour yield very different results. Most of my coconut flour creations needed to be composted (ok, I have much more experience using grain flours) until I began using a different brand of coconut flour. Has anyone else experienced this? If you bake with coconut flour, what is your favorite brand? Please leave a comment if you have a moment. I have had best results using the Let's Do Organic! brand of coconut flour.



For detailed instructions on making your own pumpkin puree go to the post I did last year on How to Make Homemade Pumpkin Puree. It is important to make it correctly otherwise your puree could end up too moist which would affect how the cupcakes turn out. I use a Dairy-Free Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe I posted over a year ago. I didn't have any opened jars of applesauce so I used 1/4 cup of Tom's freshly made dairy-free coconut yogurt (I normally use 2 tablespoons applesauce). I also increased the coconut oil to 6 tablespoons.

Milk Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Agave Frosting (Vegan & Gluten-Free)

Welcome to day three of our Gluten-Free Progressive Dinner Party! Today's theme is chocolate! I am sharing a favorite allergy-free cupcake recipe amongst the younger crowd. This chocolate cupcake is light, moist, easy to make, and has a mild chocolate flavor. The great thing about this recipe is the fact that all children love it, gluten-free or not. I also have another fun giveaway for you, read on to find out....

My 5-year old nephew was just in town visiting. I made these cupcakes for a bake sale at my children's school this past weekend. Of course I had to save a few of them! My nephew, who isn't gluten-free, loved them and asked me to send the recipe to his mom (along with a number of other recipes I made)!

Like my Soft Molasses Cookie recipe, I use either Sucanat or Coconut Sugar for the sweetener in these cupcakes. I have tested it with organic cane sugar and the overall flavor lacked the depth that only a dark, rich sugar can give. Sucanat or Coconut Sugar work beautifully. If you haven't yet entered the giveaway for the 2-pound bag of Coconut Sugar, you still have time, go to my last post to enter.

If you are interested in baking gluten-free cakes or cupcakes from a mix then I have just the thing! Authentic Foods has offered 6 Vanilla Bean Cake Mixes for a giveaway here. I love using their superfine flours in baking. You'll see a number of recipes on this blog using their flours and arrowroot powder. To be entered in the giveaway just leave a comment. To be entered twice you can share this on twitter or facebook, just be sure to come back and leave a second comment! The giveawy will remain open until 9pm PST on December 11th. I will choose 6 names using Random Number Generator so please check back to see if you won and then email me with your contact info!

Vegan, Grain-Free, Sugar-Free Chocolate Brownie Cupcakes

You are in for a real treat today! The other night I had an early morning dream of these cupcakes with the recipe clearly spelled out for me. I was in sort of a lucid dream-like state and knew I needed to write it down. But alas, I have been exhausted caring for my children who have the chicken pox (and Tom who apparently did not have them as a child). So I fell back asleep with them playing on the bed. The next time I awoke I had the recipe in the forefront of my now awake mind. I asked my seven year old, Lily, to run and get me a pen and paper. I quickly wrote it down before it disappeared into my daily routine.

I don't know if it was because I was reading Shirley's GFE blog the other night and looking at her delectable chocolate cake or what - but this type of recipe is not the norm for me. I have never made anything completely from almond flour and vegan nonetheless!

But here it was, so I thought I should at least try it out. Since the only almond flour I had was Bob's Red Mill (a rather coarse blanched almond flour) this is what I used. The result was very tasty and brownie-like but too chunky. I knew there were finer ground almond flours out there, so I googled it. Lucy's Kitchen Shop popped up. I had heard of Lucy before because she is local and has written a Specific Carbohydrate Diet cookbook that was displayed next to our cookbook at our local Co-op when it first came out.

Naturally, I called her up to see how soon I could get some of this very finely ground flour. She was lovely to speak with and I paid over the phone and stopped by her house a few hours later to pick it up!

Today I tried them with my new flour and they are oh so delicious! Simple ingredients but the end result is rich and delicious with a full-bodied chocolate flavor. This cupcake is not for the faint at heart! I had planned on posting my Lemon Poppy Seed Tea Bread for Easter but since this recipe came to me I thought I would share this one.

Now, if you are willing, I would love to know what interests you the most as far as gluten-free baking goes. Vegan? Sugar-Free? Grain-Free? Nut-Free? Everything-Free? Just Gluten-Free? Your feedback will help me with the next book (hint, hint) I have been working on. I would love to hear from you! There is a "Comment" section you can click on at the bottom of each post where you can leave a little something for me to read. You can also email me but your note may get lost in the sea of emails I receive. (If I have not responded to an email you sent, I am very sorry, just busy, please send it again!)