Cherries

I am one of those persons who thinks fruit and vegetables are a visual treat!
Their natural colour is such a mood booster for me and also part of the reason I love grocery shopping. One of the things I have missed most thanks to the COVID 19 pandemic is grocery shopping in peace. Not being able to touch, stare at those natural colours and just check out everything in the store is something I think I will be deprived of for a while .
If there is one thing Celiac Disease has helped with is make me read labels and while doing that somewhere over the last decade I have also fallen in love with just seeing fresh produce. Some of my happiest travel memories are going to markets world over and seeing fresh produce.

When we buy fruits at home, we generally just eat everything as is and I put fruit in my bakes only if we have excess from eating the fruit raw. I got some lovely fresh cherries a few days back and couldn’t resist using it for baking . I was contemplating whether I should go sweet or savoury but the cherries were just right and not sour so I decided to do a sweet bake . I like putting fruit in my bakes so I can tone down the sugar used. I am not a fan of cloyingly sweet stuff and one of the things I have noticed with commercially available gluten free stuff world over is that they are just too sweet for me. Unless l am exhausted or travelling I prefer to bake desserts myself so I can control the sugar content.

I didn’t want to make a cake because it is just too much for two people who hardly eat much of it, so I switched to making muffins. I always try to keep it simple and this recipe is something you can whip together in just forty minutes. I shared the pictures of these muffins on my social media stories and so many people wanted the recipe so sharing the recipe here .

Gluten Free Cherry Muffins

Makes 12

Ingredients

  1. Jowar /Sorghum flour – 80 gm
  2. Brown Rice flour – 80 gm
  3. Tapioca flour/starch – 65 gm *
  4. Xanthan Gum – 3/4tsp
  5. Ground Almonds – 75 gm
  6. Raw Cane Sugar – 150 gm **
  7. Baking powder – 3/4 tbsp
  8. Dairy or Non Dairy Milk – 100 ml
  9. Coconut, Olive or Sunflower oil – 150 ml
  10. Egg – 1
  11. Cherries – 175 gm, halved and stoned
  12. Almond or Vanilla Extract – 1 tsp

Method

  • Preheat the oven to 190 Degree Celsius
  • Line a 12 hole muffin pan with muffin cups, silicon mould or just grease the holes generously
  • Put the sugar, oil, milk, egg and extract in a jug and mix with a fork
  • Sift the flours and baking powder, once that is done add the ground almonds.
  • Add the fresh cherries and make sure you coat them in the flour so they don’t bleed juice out while baking
  • Add all the liquid ingredients to the flour and cherry mixture
  • The muffin batter should be like a thick cake batter. If you feel it is too runny add a tbsp of jowar or brown rice flour
  • Spoon the mixture into the cups, only 3/4 should be filled in so that they have enough room to rise.
  • Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until the muffins are a light golden brown and are firm to touch.
  • Leave them to cool on a wire rack.

Notes :

*If you do not have tapioca flour, you may use potato starch or corn starch and even arrowroot starch

**You may use coconut sugar or brown sugar, if you feel that your children may like it sweeter you may use the same quantity of caster sugar.

If you cannot use eggs, try using a commercial vegan replacer or a flax, chia egg or psyllium husk powder. 1 tbsp of flax/chia or psyllium husk in 3 tbsp of water

You do not have xanthan gum please use guar gum, the same quantity of powdered flax or chia, or psyllium husk powder .

If you cannot eat nuts try using chickpea or any bean flour or you could use a mix of bean and sunflowere or pumpkin seeds.

Happy Baking !

If you do make this please let me know how you liked it on

If you are looking to makeĀ  cherry pancakes try this – Sorghum Cherry Pancakes

To know more about Celiac Disease, gluten free living do check out my book –

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