Gluten Free Chocolate Cupcakes

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These gluten free chocolate cupcakes are the perfect indulgent treat. They are a healthier alternative to the regular chocolate cupcakes. Almond flour makes these cupcakes gluten free and their natural fat and nutty flavor adds depth, flavor and richness to the final product, while lending extra moisture to the baked good. 

Gluten free chocolate cupcakes

After gluten free brownies, I am here with a gluten free chocolate cupcake recipe. The recipe is adapted from Foolproof Living here, and its a keeper. I did replace some of the almond flour with oat flour. Also, I used regular sugar as maple syrup is more difficult to get and super expensive in India, though I am sure maple syrup would be a great addition too. Since I used regular sugar and did reduce the amount, I compensated it with a little extra liquid to keep the cupcakes moist.

I would love to try these with dates for the sweetness and some orange zest the next time I try them. Will update when I do 🙂

Store bought Vs Homemade Almond Flour

Since almond flour is super expensive, I have started making almond flour at home. It does require certain pre preparation. You need to blanch the almonds, remove the peel, let the almonds dry and then dry grind them on pulse to get a fine powder. Once you sift the powder, the fine flour you get is almond flour that you can use to bake cakes and cookies.

The reason why I use oat flour in both the gluten free brownies recipe and these gluten free chocolate cupcakes is so that I can fine grind any leftover unsifted almond flour. This way all of the blanched almonds is used in a single recipe.

You could of course make these gluten free chocolate cupcakes with store bought almond flour, but then what’s the fun in that. Also storage for nut flours is critical to avoid rancidity. You need to keep your almond flour either in the refrigerator or freezer, and since I am always struggling with refrigerator space, making one recipe portion almond flour at home, helps me avoid storing store bought almond flour problems.

Store bought almond flour is of course finer but having a powerful and reliable grinder or food processor makes it easy to get fine almond flour results at home too. I use my Hamilton Beach JMG for it, and although slightly expensive its one of my most used kitchen equipment. In collaboration with them I also made a video for making these cupcakes, and you can watch it here on my instagram.

 

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Chocolate Crinkle cookies

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Chocolate Crinkle Cookies| The Novice Housewife

There is not enough that I can say that would do justice to how good these chocolate crinkle cookies were. Crunchy exterior and almost a cake like interior and the perfect treat for any chocolate lover. Take my word for it and bake them today.

I have never had these cookies elsewhere but the texture of these always intrigued me and after I saw a few of my favorite IG accounts posting about them, I had to try them out.

I got the recipe off the America’s Test Kitchen Step By Step Holiday Baking Magazine. Its on their website as well and if cooking is your love their site is a good place to search for recipes. I tried a bunch of the magazine’s recipes during christmas- besides the chocolate crinkle cookies I tried their rosemary and olive bread and the british scones. All were great and made our christmas meals special.  You can see pictures of the food on my instagram account.

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies| The Novice Housewife

While the cookies are relatively straight forward to make, they are a few points for a successful crinkle cookie that America’s Test Kitchen tells to keep in mind:

  • One is the use of both baking powder and baking soda.
  • Two, bake from dough that has been left at room temperature for ten minutes and not straight out of the refrigerator.
  • Three, using unsweetened chocolate keeps the cookies from being overly sweet
  • Four, roll dough in both granulated and confectioners’ sugar. The granulated sugar acts as a barrier that keeps the confectioners sugar from dissolving into the cookie while baking; thus resulting in crinkle tops with a black and white top.

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Creamy Raw Chocolate Ice cream

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CREAMY RAW CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM

My one week of raw food is over. I did not lose as much weight as I wanted (I was quite disappointed yesterday about that but after eating a hot meal today I am fine), but I do feel a difference in my body shape. I feel flatter and leaner. Plus I imagine with all the greens I put in my body the past week, I only did it good. So what if I did not lose as much as I did last time, (which is weird because this time I exercised as well), I did my body a favor either way.

It was a difficult one week. But I managed it. And this sugar free, vegan, more or less guilt free banana ice cream helped me quite a bit.

Seriously, this was a treat that I had been craving for. I don’t know if it was the fact that I was deprived of all things unhealthy, but I found this ice cream to taste exactly how a chocolate ice cream tastes- creamy and chocolatey. And it comes together in a jiffy. All you need is a frozen banana and raw cacao powder. I did use a splash of almond milk just to get the blender going, but you might not require it at all. No churning in the ice cream maker. No cooking raw yolks. No cream. No nothing. Just a frozen banana, cacao powder and a blender and in two minutes you have a nice creamy chocolate ice cream without the added guilt that comes with ice cream.

A friend sent me the link to this recipe when she saw that I was on raw. It will be unfair on my part to not share this recipe with as many people as I can. So here it is- Creamy Raw Chocolate Ice cream.

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