Last week, I was browsing through a food magazine and saw a recipe for coffee-flavored muffins. Although I’m not a big fan of coffee, I love coffee-flavored food (especially if chocolate chips are thrown into the mix!). I used to be hesitant to even tweak recipes for baked goods, and I never would have thought I could come up with a recipe of my own. I think I was convinced that there was some sort of baking magic that went on in the oven and that any deviation from the recipe would have very bad results. Now that I’ve been cooking and baking for several years, I’m much more confident in the kitchen. So I sat down and came up with my own recipe. I was thrilled with how they turned out, especially given that this was really my first attempt at creating a baking recipe on my own. I used an egg, since my parents have been providing us with amazing eggs from their backyard chickens lately. But you could just as easily make a flax egg, so I included that option in the recipe. I used coffee extract because I like coffee-flavored things. If you prefer another flavor, you could probably substitute something else instead of the coffee extract.
These are relatively dense muffins. I’ve found that most of the stuff I bake using almond flour and coconut flour is usually a bit more dense than stuff made with wheat flour. But that’s just fine, because that’s how I like my muffins. If you prefer light fluffy muffins though, these might not be your favorites.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a muffin pan (this recipe makes 12 muffins) or line with muffin papers.
Dry Ingredients:
- 1 cup almonds, ground in food processor
- 1/2 cup coconut flour
- 1/2 cup oats ground in the food processor (use gluten-free oats if you’re sensitive to gluten)
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 Tbsp powdered stevia (I just buy the loose ground herb from the bulk section)
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1.5 Tbsp ground flax seed
- pinch of salt
Wet Ingredients:
- 1 cup almond milk (or whatever milk you like)
- 1 egg or a flax egg (I make flax eggs without heating them – works just as well as far as I’m concerned)
- 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (I made my own in the food processor)
- 1 Tbsp coconut oil
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 Tbsp coffee extract
Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another. Then mix them together and fold in:
- 1/3 cup miniature dark chocolate chips
- 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
The batter will be relatively thick and on the dry-ish side. Spoon into 12 muffin cups and bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Enjoy! These freeze quite well too.
Jennifer @ kidoing! says
I will try these. They sound delish. I am about to defrost some almond pulp from making almond milk. Do you think that would work in place of the ground almonds? Also, is that 1/2 *cup* applesauce? Tempted to make these now…hmmm.
Frugal Babe says
Oops! Thanks for catching that – yes it’s half a cup of applesauce. I would think that almond pulp would work but you might want to reduce the almond milk just a touch to account for the fact that almond pulp is a bit more moist than ground almonds. Then again, it might just make for a more moist muffin, which would probably be delicious too :) I hope they turn out great for you!
Maggie says
These look great! And I love the tip about buying ground stevia in bulk. I hadn’t thought of that.
Rachel Jonat says
Yum! These look great and are perfect for this gluten-free household. Thank you!!
Kaytee says
I had the same thought as Jennifer! Sweet, something to do with the mondo bag of almond pulp in my freezer and I think I still have some jars of our homemade applesauce left. I’m curious, do you make your own extracts? I’m currently experimenting, and have a vanilla extract and an almond extract… extracting.
Beckers says
These look yummy and so healthy. I use Stevia Extract…wonder how much I would use? I would also cut out the sugar as I’m on a sugar free diet.
Anonymous says
Not sure how much stevia extract you’d use if you were replacing all of the sugar in the recipe, but I would guess that it would require some adjustment of the wet/dry ingredients aswell. Please let us know how it turns out if you experiment. We’ve been on a low-sugar eating plan for years now, but we haven’t ever cut it out completely. I’m not willing to use any sort of artificial sweeteners, and stevia doesn’t work in everything. So although we eat very little sugar, we do eat some. I usually buy a 1.5 lb bottle of raw honey and a 1 lb bag of coconut sugar and those last us several months. In addition, we also keep a small supply of bulk stevia on hand, and my husband uses stevia packets in his tea. All in all, it feels like a pretty good compromise.