I’m going to be honest here: gluten-free baking scares me. I don’t personally eat gluten free, but I know a bunch of my readers do, based on the number of questions and comments I get concerning gluten free substitutions. Because of this I’ve been making an effort lately to make my recipes more gluten-free friendly. This is often as easy as making a note in the recipe where a simple substitution will remove all sources of gluten. Easy. Except when it comes to baking.
The obvious source of my apprehension is flour, and while there are lots of gluten free blends available, they don’t all contain the same ingredients, so I hear lots of “This brand works for this recipe but not that one.” While I’m happy to recommend brands when I can, I recognize that some folks have favorites, or in some cases just one brand that’s even available. For that reason, I created my very own gluten-free flour blend, just for this recipe. It’s awesome, and super simple. Oats. That’s it. Grind up the oats, and you’ve got your gluten free flour for a delicious batch of oatmeal chocolate chip muffins.
This is the first time I’ve made a recipe with all oat flour, so I can’t say how it would work out in other stuff, but in these muffins, it worked perfect. I was dubious. I suspected this might be one of those recipes where the end product is too hideous to blog, but at least tasty enough to snack on. (I often have to take that attitude, otherwise I wouldn’t generate half the recipes I do.) They were great though. Nice texture, awesome flavor, and they even held together nicely. I was so excited that for a short while I thought I’d never use wheat flour again. I’m sure I will at some point, but for now, I’m happy with these soluble fiber packed and lightly sweet muffins, which have been a big help in weaning me off of Christmas cookies over the past week.
Gluten Free Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins
Ingredients
- 3 tbsp. water
- 1 tbsp. ground flax seeds
-
2 1/2
cups
gluten free rolled oats
- 1 tbsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 3/4 cup unflavored soy or almond milk
- 1/2 cup coconut milk
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 2 tbsp. coconut oil melted (or neutral flavor baking oil)
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
-
1
cup
vegan and gluten free chocolate chips
- 1/2 cup sliced or slivered almonds
Instructions
-
Whisk water and flax seeds together in a small bowl. Allow to sit at least 10 minutes.
-
Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350º. Line 12 cup muffin tin with papers.
-
Grind oats to a powder using food processor or coffee grinder. Work in batches if necessary. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and add baking powder, cinnamon and salt.
-
In separate, medium bowl, whisk together soy or almond milk, coconut milk, maple syrup, oil, vanilla and flax mixture. Add to dry ingredients and stir just until blended. Fold in chips and almonds.
-
Divide batter among muffin cups. Bake 16-18 minutes. The tops may feel slightly soft when done, but they will firm up as the muffins cool. Transfer to cooling rack and allow to cool completely before removing from tin.
Oatmeal is always great, I love its benefits for our health
Me too!
I don’t normally use coconut milk. What type does this recipe call for? Do you think it would be ok to just use all almond milk? Thanks.
The full-fat kind you’d find in a can. You could substitute almond milk, but they might not come out as moist because it does’t have as much fat as coconut milk. It that happens you might want to increase the oil content a bit. I hope that helps! Enjoy!
I used Ripple pea protein milk and coconut yogurt and it came out great!