Orange Muffins
Orange muffins.. sounds boring, but they taste delicious! Maybe I'll come up with a better title for this recipe later... lol. I adapted this recipe from Pretty Simple Sweet blog, just made some of my nutritionisty substitutions and additions to make them gluten free and refined sugar free. In order to make them sugar free but equally sweet I used Xylitol which is a sugar alcohol. It has about 33% less calories than sugar. It is absorbed much slower than sugar and does not spike blood sugar levels making it most often safe for diabetics. It also reduces dental cavities by remineralization of deeper layers of demineralized enamel. Xylitol is safe, there are no studies that connect it to any of the negative health affects that have been seen in studies regarding artificial sweeteners (Xylitol is not an artificial sweetener, it is a sugar alcohol), but too much (1/2 cup/day+ usually, but varies person to person) can cause some gastrointestinal upset.
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup Xylitol
- 2 Tbsp. orange zest
- 1 3/4 cups Bob's Red Mill gluten free all-purpose flour, sifted
- 3/4 tsp. xanthan gum
- 2 1/2 tsp. baking power
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 1/3 cup coconut oil, melted
- 1/4 cup plain yogurt
- 1/4 cup choice milk (I used coconut)
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
- 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
- For the topping; crushed almonds and sprinkled cinnamon.
Method
- Preheat oven to 375f./190c
- Grease 12 muffin cups or line them with paper cups.
- Mix together all the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl; Xylitol, orange zest, flour, xanthan gum, baking powder, and salt.
- Mix together all of the wet ingredients; coconut oil (make sure it's not too hot or will cook the egg!), eggs, yogurt, milk, OJ, and vanilla extract.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix together well.
- Pour the batter in to the 12 muffin cups and then top with crushed almonds and cinnamon.
- Bake for approx. 20 mins, until tooth pick comes out clean.
