I grew up on muffins in Canada – apple, spice, pumpkin, carrot, blueberry, chocolate chip, the whole lot of them. To me, nothing beats a muffin with a  large coffee in the morning, but it’s not really the most balanced breakfast because they are often filled with sugar; so when I became sugar and gluten free I entirely gave them up….until I decided to test a few paleo ones using a mix of various flours. So far, these are the best ones I’ve come across. They last about a day at our house…

Ingredients

1 ¼ cup of almond meal / flour

2-3 tbsp coconut flour

½ baking powder

A pinch of salt

2 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

1/8  tsp cloves

2 eggs

1/3 cup of maple syrup

1/3 cup of oil – I use coconut, but you could use vegetable oil or melted ghee if you like

2 tsp vanilla

2/3 cup of finely grated carrots

 

Frosting

1/2 cup of cream cheese

2 tbsp maple syrup

 

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F/175C
2. Mix all the dry ingredients and set aside
3. Beat the eggs, add the syrup and vanilla
4. Gently fold in the wet ingredients into the dry ones and add the carrots. Don’t overmix – this is key in any muffin recipe, even gluten-free ones
5. Fill in around 8 muffin cups – I prefer to line them with paper muffin cups to avoid them sticking to the pan. Otherwise, lightly grease and flour (with gluten free flour) your muffin cups
6. Leave in the oven between 15-20 minutes. If you have not baked them in muffin cups only wait a couple of minutes before taking them out of the pan
7. Mix the frosting ingredients
8. Frost when muffins are cooled