These muffins are a result of leftover chickpeas (I used the rest to make the Orgasmic Cookie Dough from Periods, Poo & A Glorious You), a big-ass pumpkin and a new delivery of chocolate chips.
I’d rather celebrate what they are, rather than what they are NOT, but this is 2020 and we like labels for ease of navigation. So, for your convenience, please know that these babies are …
Every family has a favourite Christmas Cake recipe. Passed down through the generations or created in recent times from experimentation gone right. This moist fruit cake is the latter.
A synergy of almonds, coconut and banana flour makes this special Chrissie treat gluten and grain-free without compromising texture or flavour. The addition of essential oils brings an a touch of Christmas love and makes me think of my friend Kimmy – the woman that took my mild affection for essential oils and turned it into borderline-obsession (and I wouldn’t have it any other way!)
These were previously called ‘My Favourite GAPS Muffins’ and if you search for them on this site, their original post will still come up.
Earlier this year, my mates Jo and Foo released their beautiful cookbook ‘Life Changing Food’, which contains a slight adaptation of said GAPS muffins that Jo dubbed ‘Rachel’s Fat Bomb Muffins’. This recipe has been very well received and I keep getting tagged all over social media alongside photos of these darling cakes being made by their readership. It’s very humbling and super-duper exciting.
I LOVE nuts. And seeds.
Without them, I’d likely starve.
Or, at the very least, spend large chucks of my days drowning in tears of peanut-butter-deprivation-induced misery.
Cashews in creamy soups, pepitas sautéed in coconut aminos and sprinkled on meals, macadamias in these muffins, almonds in bliss balls and inca inchi seed butter with bananas. Dreamy!
When I was 16 – stepping back in time to 2013 – I was forevermore whipping up homemade halva balls. Halva is a middle eastern dessert made from tahini (ground sesame seeds) and honey. There’s usually a few other bits and bobs in there too, such as chopped nuts.
I’m all about keeping things humble, so I’d simply keep a bowl of un-hulled tahini mixed with raw honey in the fridge. When I felt like a snack or instant dessert, I’d roll a few spoons of said mix into balls, roll said balls in chia seeds and stud them with a goji berries.
Fucking Finally! A cake that doesn’t involve the beloved high-speed blender. I’m a sucker for my Vitamix – she makes my life so damn easy … and cheaper! It’s costs far less of those hard-earned dollars to purchase whole nuts, whole seeds and whole grains, rather than pre-made flours. She (Miss Mix) also whips eggs like a pro, creating thick, fluffy, shut-all-the-front-doors-because-I-can’t-even-handle-the-amazingness-of-their-consistency-type batters. Honesty, I just get lazy and chuck everything in and then take the credit for the amazing results when really all I did was throw bits and bobs into my trusty kitchen (I’d-be-lost-without-you) companion.
When I was in primary school, my absolute favourite baked good was mum’s homemade milk-chocolate chip muffins. They were seriously the best. Light, fluffy and loaded with sweet and creamy chocolate chips. Like most kids, I had quirky ways of eating certain foods. I loved nothing more than to nibble the buttery muffin parts around the choccie chips, leaving big mounds of chocolate sections for an epic chocolate-in-my-mouth “explosion” afternoon tea finale.
The next time you have 2 large overripe bananas growing lonely in your fruit bowl make them feel useful again by preparing these muffins. I call them pecan “butter” muffins because they using 2 cups of pecans – as luck would have it – acts as both the “flour” and “butter” component. The beauty of this method is that the muffins are naturally gluten, grain and dairy-free – perfect for those with allergies or on temporary gut-healing protocols, needing to avoid such ingredients but still wanting a treat.
