Recipe Gluten-Free Muffins with Almond Meal, Squash and Blueberries

[Mountain Cat]

I made this back when I was eating essentially Paleo (no grains) at least as to what I cooked at home. Back in the early 2010's. I was still able to eat pine nuts then. I made these for a bake sale at work.



GLUTEN FREE MUFFINS WITH ALMOND MEAL, SQUASH AND BLUEBERRIES

• 3 cups almond meal
• 1.5 cup canned pumpkin or rendered butternut squash (NOTE: I wanted to use canned pumpkin. Even though it’s canned, no could find this spring. There were pre-chopped blocks of butternut squash in my supermarket, so I simmered them 40 minutes, then worked with my immersion blender to make them about the consistency of most canned pumpkin I’d ever seen – you have to drain and play with liquid)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3 teaspoons of pumpkin spices: I used about 3 parts cinnamon to one part nutmeg. I would have added allspice if I could have found it lurking somewhere in my cabinet, where I know it remains hiding…
• ¼ teaspoon salt.
• 2 teaspoons real vanilla
• 6 eggs. Yes, something has to bind the almond meal and other ingredients together, in lieu of gluten.
• ¾ cup 100% real maple syrup. At least with the squash, which came with no added sugars. I am not sure what canned pumpkin comes with, judge accordingly by label.
• ½ cup blueberries (I made this a heaping ½ cup, and then add a few more)
• ¾ cup pine nuts. (Ideally, toast them. I didn't have the time.)

Mix all the dry stuff together, by hand.

Add all the wet stuff except the pumpkin/squash and the blueberries, and mix, by hand.

Mix in the pumpkin or squash.

Mix in the blueberries without unduly crushing them.

At some point close to when you need to use the oven, preheat it to 350 F.

Put in muffin pans, as per usual. I used paper liners for some but not for all — my muffin pan is silcon and flexible, which, with a little oil at the bottom, facilitates removal if one is careful, and if not too many blueberries drop to the bottom.

Bake 20-25 minutes. My batches tended towards the latter timeframe. This made 18 muffins here.

These muffins were indeed very moist and they sold out.