Katie Metka Photography

Okay, my family and I have recently (for just the past month really) adopted a gluten free diet.  Never thought WE would do that!  I’m known for my love of bread.  Now, even only being on the diet for a few weeks, I don’t even crave the bread!  We didn’t jump on the Paleo bandwagon, but decided to try the GAPS diet.  On the GAPS you can still have homemade yogurt (which we were already making), raw milk, and some cheeses.  I hesitate to even mention all this because you know how it goes, you tell people you’re doing something and then something happens, and you decide to not do it anymore and then you look silly.  Hopefully that won’t be the case, because we feel WONDERFUL!  I knew that I had stomach pain after eating, but I didn’t realize how horrible it was until I DIDN’T have the pain anymore!  We had gone a few weeks on the diet, and then on Easter Sunday I decided to treat us to some homemade baked french fries in olive oil (starchy veggies are not allowed on GAPS either).  Man oh man!  Both Oresti and I said how awful we felt after that meal.  So we won’t be cheating any more, it’s not worth the pain.

Baking has been fun, experimenting with flours.  I’ve settled on almond flour though, and I love it.  The best I think is blanched almond flour from Honeyville {you can only order it online}.  The almond flour at the grocery store is really meal.  It isn’t ground as finely as the Honeyville brand and will change the texture and density of your baked product.

This morning, we didn’t have enough eggs to feed the crew {we eat about 10 eggs at breakfast; I can’t imagine how many we will eat when these girls are full grown!}.  So, I decided to whip up some muffins.  This was my first time just coming up with my own recipe, I even wrote down on my paper “1st try” thinking they wouldn’t really be so good.  Oh my!  These were the best muffins I’ve ever had!  Which is why I just had to share the recipe so that any of you gluten-freers would like to try:)  Now it’s not dairy free {I don’t believe in cutting butter out of my life} but if you must be dairy free I’m sure you could use coconut oil instead and they would be good {I would melt the coconut oil though so you don’t have oil lumps}.

anyway, here’s the recipe:

Gluten Free Banana Muffins

3 cups blanched almond flour from Honeyville

1/2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

3 eggs

1/2 cup raw honey

1 tsp vanilla

1 stick {half cup} melted butter

2 bananas {mashed}

heat oven to 350 degrees.  Either grease your muffin cups or use paper liners like I did.  In a mixing bowl combine the flour, salt and baking soda.  In another bowl beat the eggs with the honey, vanilla, melted butter and mashed bananas.  Spoon the batter into your cups {this made 15 muffins for me} and bake for about 25 min.  Watch it at the end, mind could have gotten too dark if I hadn’t peeked at 24 min.  Stick a toothpick in them, should come out clean.  And enjoy!!

EDIT:  I never measure.  I just go by how the ingredient feels in my hand.  But this morning I measured, and I would increase the baking soda to 1 tsp, and maybe decrease the salt to 1/4.  I also experimented and only added a spoon of honey, it wasn’t sweet enough for me though.  So I would keep the 1/2 cup in there.  But go ahead and make your own experiments!!

I am definitely not an expert on the GAPS diet, but I do so enjoy learning knew things about my health.  I may have to do a healthy post once in awhile, in between photographs:)