Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Do the Almond Mash

Tonight's baking extravaganza all started when Mike wanted some chai tea.  We had just finished our gluten free spaghetti with homemade tomato sauce and homemade bean/tofu balls.

"I wish we had some milk to go with our chai", he said.

So I got to work on making some almond milk for the chai (I must admit I was doing this mostly because I really wanted some almond milk chai, too!)

I just use my food processor to blend up the almonds and water to make almond milk (no fancy Vita-Mix for me...yet), so I have a good amount of almond pulp leftover when I strain the milk.

In the past I've usually used this pulp in cookies, but tonight I decided that muffins were in order.

Hence, the Banana Chocolate Almond muffins!


Banana Chocolate Almond Muffins 

2 medium bananas, mashed (about 1 cup)

1/2 cup packed almond puree*

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup canola oil

1/2 cup water

2 tsp. vanilla

 

1 1/3 cups brown rice flour

2/3 cups tapioca starch

2 tsp. xanthan gum

1/2 tsp. salt

1 Tbsp. baking powder

 

1/2 cup chocolate chips

 

*This is the almond mash leftover after making and straining almond milk. 

 

Preheat oven to 350F and line a 12-cup muffin tin with liners.  Mix together the banana mash, almond puree, oil, water, brown sugar, and vanilla.  In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, starch, xanthan gum, salt, and baking powder.  Carefully stir about 1/3 of the flour mixture into the banana mixture.  Then add another 1/3 of the flour and stir.  Finally add the last of the flour and stir.  Fold in the chocolate chips. 

 

Spoon the batter into muffin tin liners- I like to fill these pretty full for 12 big muffins.  But if you like little muffins, you'd probably get about 16 of them.  Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean.  Remove from pan to cool.

3 comments:

Catherine Weber said...

Thanks for the idea! I've always wondered what I should do with the almond muck. :)

allularpunk said...

amazing! those look just perfect. i've never made almond milk (or had it, either), but it always sounds so yummy. still, i am most enticed by those muffins.

Anonymous said...

Yummy! Those look so good!