It’s been a hot minute since I really took time to create a new recipe. I’ve avoided baking aside from very special requests for quite some time. It’s been partially the pain from CRPS holding me back. Dance classes have been keeping me busy. I have a job that never seems to quit.
I’ve been writing. Essays about former friends. Wellness advice that I should be following whole heartedly (rather than the half-heartedly way I follow it at the moment). I’ve been making videos about gluten-free makeup so I can learn how YouTube works. Someone told me video is the future…three years ago. Those will be making some appearances here…when I figure out exactly what “even curiouser” means when it comes to videos.
But something hit me last weekend and I wanted to bake. No. I needed to bake. I needed to mix up something sweet and I needed it to be something I hadn’t made before. It needed to be simple enough because the urge hit me at 9pm on a Sunday night. The recipe couldn’t be sized to feed an army because I live in a household of one. It had to be something I would want to eat. Something that keeps well.
I settled on a small batch of gluten-free chocolate muffins. One bowl. I wanted to bake them in my counter top convection oven. (You know, I haven’t turned on my actual oven in nearly year…). I poked around in my freezer looking for chocolate chips and came up with a bag of raspberries instead. I decided to go for it.
This recipe is what resulted. Rich. Slightly tart. Almost too decadent to be a muffin…just the way I like it. They aren’t the prettiest (I should have smoothed out the tops a little), but this isn’t a beauty pageant. This is serious food. It’s breakfast. The kind of breakfast that makes sure that I am deserving of my mom’s nickname for me when I was young – Mary Muffin. Actually, if I was a muffin, I might just be these. Or these might be me. I’m not too sure how that would go…
Ok, enough rambling. Let’s make muffins.
Gluten-Free Chocolate Raspberry Muffins
Muffins are the best. They’re like a baked pancake. Or a breakfast cupcake. These rich, chocolate ones with tart raspberries are simply decadent. *I use Cup4Cup Gluten-Free All-Purpose flour in all of my recipes. Any other blend you use should weigh about 140 grams per cup. Any substitutions should be similar in both weight and …
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted
- 1 1/4 cups (175 grams) gluten-free all purpose flour*
- 2/3 cup (50 grams) cocoa powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup almond or soy milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon strongly brewed coffee
- 1 cup (100 grams) sugar
- 3/4 cup raspberries (a full cup may cause you to have enough batter for a 7th muffin)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a 6-pan muffin tin with paper liners or grease and flour the wells. If you only have a 12 pan tin, fill the middle 2 rows of 3 wells.
- Melt butter and cool slightly.
- While your butter cools, in a medium size mixing bowl, whisk together your gluten-free flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
- I a large liquid measuring cup where you measured your milk, add your egg, sugar, vanilla, coffee and melted butter. Whisk them all together. This limits your dishes. If your liquid measuring cup is small, use a small mixing bowl.
- Add your liquid mixture to your dry mixture and mix until just combined. Stir in your raspberries but try not to mash them.
- Fill your muffin papers to nearly the top.
- Bake for about 6 minutes until the tops of your muffins have domed up. Drop the temperature to 350 degrees for the remaining baking time. Bake an additional 10-20 minutes, checking doneness after 10 minutes. Differences in flour blends and milks will affect baking time. A toothpick should come out clean or with a couple crumbs when inserted into the center of the muffin.
- Cool slightly and enjoy warm or let cool completely and store in an air-tight container. Muffins will keep for 3 days at room temperature or several months in the freezer.