Healthy Apple Muffins– Gluten Free and Grain free

Moist, cinnamon-y, healthy apple muffins are a favorite fall treat for breakfast, snack, or even dessert! Gluten free, grain free, and refined-sugar free, these muffins are an easy recipe for everyday and delicious enough for a special treat.

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Muffins are a wonderful little treat now and then! Convenient to serve and pack, and tasty, these healthy apple muffins can work for gluten free, grain free, refined sugar free, and GAPS diet. You can also (easily) make them dairy free!

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What makes these apple muffins healthy? Well, they aren’t perfect, but here are some benefits:

• no refined sugar— most muffins recipes are loaded with sugar! They taste wonderful, but we may not feel so wonderful if we eat them often.
• gluten free— not everyone needs to be gluten free, but more and more of us avoid gluten for different reasons.
• grain free— many people do just fine with grains, especially fermented grains, but some of us feel much better without them. This is particularly true of anyone recovering from a chronic illness and working on gut health.
• nothing highly processed— while the flours and coconut are somewhat processed, these healthy apple muffins are made with fairly whole foods. There isn’t anything unrecognizable or icky.

Is almond flour healthy?

While some tout almond flour as a health food, others avoid it like the plague! Who is right?!

Well, almonds have some problems. The hardest one to address is that almonds are fairly high in oxalates. Oxalates occur naturally in many foods (in varying amounts) and as waste produced in our bodies. They can contribute to many health problems, such as joint or other pain, urinary and thyroid problems, and kidney stones, among others. Read more here.

For anyone sensitive to oxalates, almonds may not be a good choice. Fermenting improves some downsides to almonds, but not oxalates. This is one reason I don’t bake with almond flour very often. Once in awhile seems to be OK; we don’t seem to be particularly sensitive to oxalates.

Fermenting Almond Flour

Though it won’t affect oxalate levels, fermenting almond flour can:

• reduce naturally occurring phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors, which damage our guts
• make it more digestible
• improve the availability of the nutrients in almonds to our bodies
• give baked goods a bit lighter texture– almond flour can lead to somewhat dense results, but fermented almond flour makes baked goods a little fluffier

Read more about almond flour fermenting here!

How to Ferment Almond Flour for Extra Healthy Apple Muffins

You don’t have to ferment the almond flour! If you tolerate almond flour well and normally bake with it without problems, feel free to skip the fermenting step. The recipe will work without it. You can make muffins on the spur of the moment with unfermented almond flour!

1. Measure out your flour into a bowl. This recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups.
2. Stir in kefir, whey, or yogurt so that the flour is coated and slightly moist. I used 1/4 cup of whey left from straining homemade yogurt. Other times I have used kefir. It won’t be very wet, but will look sort of crumbly. (In the picture, mine is a bit wetter than it should have been!)
3. Cover and let sit at room temperature for a day or two. I prefer just one day. After two days, there is a stronger, yeastier flavor. Sometimes, I do half a day.
4. If you don’t use your fermented flour right away, you can refrigerate it for up to a week, tightly covered. I always use it much sooner that that! It will ferment a bit more in the refrigerator, but not nearly as much as at room temperature.

While there is some planning involved in baking with fermented flour, it takes only a few minutes of hands-on time.

How to Make Healthy Apple Muffins

Once your almond flour is ready (whether you ferment or not), the steps are simple!

Mix all your dry ingredients– flour, baking soda, spices, salt– together. Thoroughly mix in the eggs, melted butter, honey and vanilla. The batter will be thin, but it will thicken somewhat in a couple of minutes. The reason for this is that coconut flour absorbs large amounts of liquid. It is nothing like other flours! Even though this recipe calls for just a little coconut flour, you will see a difference in the batter after a few minutes.

Peel your apple– usually just one is enough, but sometimes I use two if they are small. Grate it to equal 1 1/2 cups. This can be approximate! If you have a little more, it will be fine.

The apple lends flavor, of course, plus a lot of moisture. Besides that, the apple does a lot of the sweetening. I like to use a sweet apple, often Fuji, Gala, or Pink Lady, but you can use what you have.

Stir the apple, coconut, and, optionally, chopped nuts into the batter. Portion it out into muffin cups and bake for 20 minutes or until done.

Either remove your muffins as soon as they come out of the oven and cool them on a rack, or tip them so the air can circulate underneath them. Rule for life and muffin baking: keep your bottoms dry! These muffins are a little more prone to getting soggy because almond flour is kind of dense and all the apple and coconut affect the moisture.

Can Healthy Apple Muffins be GAPS diet compliant?

Yes; if you are on the GAPS diet, pay attention to these details:

• the almond and coconut flours should both be freshly ground
• the almond flour should be fermented
• if you include nuts, be sure you have soaked and dried them according to GAPS instructions

Make Healthy Apple Muffins Your Way!

• for dairy free: sub coconut oil, lard, or other fat for the butter
• try other spices– pumpkin pie spice, ginger, cardamon, clove– whatever you like!
• skip the nuts, or use a different nut, such as pecans, or even seeds, such as pepitas or sunflower seeds
• add raisins, currants, or dried cranberries or cherries
• top with more nuts, streusel, or, after cooling, a glaze or frosting
• while you are melting the butter, go ahead and brown it! Simply keep heating and stirring until the butter turns a bit tan and smells rich and warm, then turn off the heat quickly to avoid burning. Browned butter will deepen the flavor and make it more caramel-like. Delicious!

Looking for more muffins? Try these!

pumpkin bread with almond flour–make it as muffins!

pumpkin bread with coconut flour– bake in muffins cups

banana chocolate muffins with almond flour

banana chocolate muffins with coconut flour