12 May Gluten-Free Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Let’s just call these the 80:20 rule. They’re about 80% good for you, which is still a pretty impressive ratio as far as food goes. Most muffins would fall much below this ratio, perhaps 40:60 or even 30:70 because they’re often loaded with sugar, bleached flour and saturated fat. Not exactly a nutrition “dream”. Having said that, I also feel it’s important to enjoy food and not get too caught up in over analyzing your food choices. If you make sound choices 80% of the time, you’re doing pretty well.

So, what makes these muffins 80% healthy? Well for starters, I’m using chickpea flour. Chickpea flour is not only gluten-free, but it’s a great source of protein, fibre and even the mineral iron! It’s a fantastic substitute for wheat flour. What brings this recipe down a bit is the Demerara sugar. Demerara (turbinado) sugar is nutritionally superior to white sugar, but it is, after all, still sugar, which is hardly considered a health food. Then, I decided that these would be much prettier if I dressed them up with a nice glaze….so, out came the (don’t judge me) icing sugar!!! Now the glaze could always be skipped, but come on, live a little!

I should note that cookbook author Camilla Saulsberg deserves credit for this recipe. I swapped out a few ingredients, tripled the lemon juice and took a few other liberties, but I used her recipe as the skeleton….full disclosure.

Gluten-free Lemon Poppyseed Muffins

2/3 cup non-dairy milk
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 cup chickpea flour
1/4 cup oatmeal flour (simply blend oatmeal in blender until fine)
1/4 cup demerara sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon fine grain salt
3 tablespoons  + 1 teaspoon coconut oil – warmed to liquid
2 teaspoons poppy seeds
2 teaspoons lemon zest

Glaze
6 tablespoons icing sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice….combine sugar and lemon juice until well combined.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Add lemon juice to almond milk. Let sit 5 -10 minutes.

In a separate bowl, combine chickpea and oatmeal flours, sugar, baking soda and salt. Add milk mixture, coconut oil, poppy seeds and lemon zest. Combine well but do not over-mix. Spoon into parchment-lined muffin tin tray. Bake for 20 minutes or until lightly browned and inserted toothpick comes out clean. Once cool, drizzle muffins with glaze. Enjoy!