Saturday, June 12, 2010

Muffin Mayhem

I spent the morning in the kitchen experimenting with different kinds of muffins. One important lesson was learned. The kind of rice you use to make the flour is very important! I've been using a short grain brown rice and it's worked wonderfully. Earlier today, I picked up a bag of sweet brown rice thinking it would be good to try for "sweet" foods like muffins. That assumption was WRONG. The sweet rice was way too sticky and I ended up with a gooey mess where I wanted blueberry-apple muffins. Oh well. Next time, I will have my blueberry-apple muffins! For now, I'll have to settle for Pumpkin-Quinoa and Pumpkin-Zucchini (I had pumpkin I needed to use up). On to the recipes ... which I actually wrote down as I baked to verify. For the record, I use a cheapie coffee bean grinder to make my own flours for my son's sake. I use Lundberg Short Grain Brown Rice and run the grinding cycle a few times to get the flour a little more fine. This is a textured muffin.



Instructions: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a single bowl, mix together the ingredients of one of the following muffin types. Pour batter into a lined muffin tin. The muffins will stick to the pan, so liners are very important. Each recipe makes 6 muffins. I like to mix and match my muffins, so I keep the batches small. For full size muffins bake for 20-25 minutes. Mini-muffins take about 12-15 minutes.

Any Flavor Muffins
  • 1 C brown rice flour
  • 1/4 C brown sugar
  • 1 1/2 t baking powder
  • 1/4 t salt
  • 3/4 C unsweetened applesauce
  • 1/3 C water
  • 1/4 C add-in ingredient of your choice (blueberries, apple, chocolate chips)

Rice Quinoa Pumpkin Muffins
  • 3/4 C brown rice flour
  • 1/4 C white quinoa flour (also home-made in a coffee bean grinder)
  • 1/4 C brown sugar
  • 1 1/2 t baking powder
  • 1/4 t salt
  • 1/2 C unsweetened applesauce
  • 1/2 C canned pumpkin
  • 1/3 C water

Rice Pumpkin Zucchini Muffins
  • 1 C brown rice flour
  • 1/4 C brown sugar
  • 1 1/2 t baking powder
  • 1/4 t salt
  • 1/2 C unsweetened applesauce
  • 1/4 C canned pumpkin
  • 1/2 C grated zucchini (I use a food processor)
  • 1/3 C water

6 comments:

Shannon said...

Thank you for posting these!

If you get a chance, could you email me? scarino@gmail.com Something I wanted to ask you about!

Mitzie said...

recipes look great! Thanks for sharing! We recently discovered a dairy allergy in my son so we are continuing to be very careful with all potential allergenic foods. Have you ever tried making the rice flour in a food processor? I don't have a coffee grinder but I have a kitchen aide food processor that rarely gets used. TIA!

VegetusMaximus said...

Mitzie,

I have never tried making rice flour in a food processor. Unless you have a super-fine setting, I don't think it could grind the rice fine enough. :(

Mitzie said...

Thanks for the advice! The rice flour I can find in my town is all manufactured in factories with nuts! :( guess I get to spring for another kitchen appliance (makes me happy. hubby, not so much). love your blog btw! Thanks again

Lizard said...

Bob's Red mill ( http://www.bobsredmill.com/gluten-free/ )has an amazing variety of GF flours and mixes, I'm not sure about the processing near nuts, but their facilities are separate for GF. I hope you're having luck finding legume substitutes, Quinoa and millet have great protein potential and are pretty tasty.

VegetusMaximus said...

Lizard, unfortunately Bobs Red Mill is not safe for people with nut allergies (at least not when I contacted the company earlier in the year). It's a real bummer because they have so many great grain alternatives. If only they could have a nut free facility! Argh!