baking gluten free

So I am not gluten free or dairy free or really any dietary restrictions. But I am intrigued by these styles of cooking. When I eat at restaurants with these foods, they always seem to be so rich in flavour yet so healthy, all this despite a lack of traditional ingredients.

Having explored different foods I have discovered the joys of quinoa, kamut baked goods, steel cut oats (once I found an efficient method to cook them of course!), to only name a few!  My latest obsession is everything Almond flour!

Almond flour just tastes so good. For the majority of my life I always pretended to be allergic to nuts so that I wouldn't be forced to eat them. Crazy right, well I never really enjoyed their flavour with the exception of peanut butter (they tell me that's because of all the sugar Craft inserts! Surprise, not really), so it was just easier to tell someone that I was allergic then sit through someone telling me how good they are, and me trying to explain myself.  I'm still not inclined to eat nuts just as is, I like some toasted, or at the very least mixed with fruit and/or chocolate.  I know I'm strange, but I also don't like popcorn, I think its a teeth/texture/chewy thing.

So almond flour, although intuitively not the easiest to bake with but once you get used to it its a great alternative.

With my experimentations I have discovered that almond flour like most nuts has a natural fattiness.  So by cutting your fat content in a recipe is important. Depending on the recipe I might cut it in half but at the very least I would cut a quarter or the amount.

Second thing is to remember, it isn't really flour.  It is ground up almonds turned into a relatively fine powder. It won't rise, especially if it is too wet and fatty.  So in my latest almond baking attempt I did a 1 to 1 ratio of almond flour and an alternate, if you don't mind wheat go for it.  In the recipe I will post after this I put a cups worth of quinoa in the blender and created my own quinoa flour. Which was easier then I expected.

I might add here that by doing a 1 to 1 ratio you will save money not using so much Almond flour since like Almonds, it's expensive.  But Almond flour is worth its weight in gold, it really is that good!

Finally I want to say that when I bake these treats, I don't feel as bad (or guilty...), it really is easier on the digestive tract.

So I hope you enjoy my Gluten free banana muffins!