Gluten-free muffins with bean, rice & tapioca flours

This recipe is from The Best-Ever Wheat and Gluten Free Baking Book and like the other recipes from this book I’ve used, it turned out excellently. The book credits the recipe to the Bob’s Red Mill website by Carol Fenster, of which this is an adaptation. It’s actually a recipe for Blueberry Muffins but I didn’t have blueberries so I adapted it with the dried fruits in my fridge — sultanas and cranberries.

If you’ve read my posting on Gluten-free, yeast-free bean bread or my improved recipe for gluten-free, yeast-free bean bread, you’ll notice this flour mix also uses chickpea (garbanzo) bean flour and tapioca flour, although the other flours and proportions are different. An additional ingredient here is the gelatin powder, which I purchased in Phoon Huat. Like the bean bread recipe, this uses the muffin method (explained here).

And the results of this recipe are actually much better than the earlier bean bread ones! There’s only very minimal sinking of the muffin tops after baking, and the inner texture has more even rising, with no centre that is denser than the outer sections.

A highly recommended basic recipe.

DRY INGREDIENTS

1 cup (140g) chickpea (garbanzo) bean flour and/or fava bean flour [I used all chickpea flour from the Indian grocery store]
1/2 cup (110g) rice flour
1/2 cup (80g) tapioca flour
2 tsp flaxseed meal
1 tsp unflavoured gelatin powder
2 tsp xantham gum
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup (100g) sugar or 170g honey [omitted]
1 tsp sea salt [omitted]

WET INGREDIENTS
1 cup (235ml) milk – rice, soy, nut or dairy milk
1/2 cup (55g) butter, softened [I used coconut oil instead as too lazy to melt the butter]
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup mixed dried fruit [original recipe calls for 1 Tbs grated lemon peel and 1 cup blueberries]

1) Mix dry ingredients together.
2) Whisk together wet ingredients.
3) Combine wet & dry ingredients. Stir till just mixed, be careful not to overmix.
4) Fold in fruit.
5) Bake in preheated oven at 200°C for 25 mins.