Kitchen Adventures: Expensively Delicious ‘Paleo’ Blueberry Muffins

I’m not a Paleo-ista. I find most of the recipes long, time-consuming and expensive. Like the Paleo blueberry muffins I made last night - and again this morning. The ingredients were not cheap and were even harder to find.

Okay, so maybe making Paleo blueberry muffins isn’t really expensive if you make them correctly the first time. I think the total cost of ingredients (keeping in mind you will have enough to use again, except the blueberries) was, like, $18 plus change. However, I ended up spending another $10 because the first batch ended up like this: 

Will suck all the moisture from your entire body and taste like cardboard. 

I mean, in the pan, it looked like the top of a blueberry cobbler, crispy and yummy. But when I bit into it, it sucked up all the moisture in my mouth like a Bounty paper towel and tasted like cardboard. I’m not entirely sure this isn’t how they actually make cardboard.

You might be wondering why I’m dabbling in the kitchen trying to make a healthy blueberry muffin when 1) I’m a donut kinda chick and 2) it’s a known fact that I dislike diets and ‘diet food.’ Or you might not, but I’m going to give you the scoop anyway. 

I’m doing the Whole Life Challenge with my gym-mates at a performance level to see how close I can get to muscles and abs without having to stand next to someone who has them.

So there’s the back story.

Let me just be honest here, I’m not a domestic goddess in the kitchen. If it’s simple, comes in a box, from a restaurant, or it’s Italian, I’m pretty good at making it. Plus, with my schedule, it’s easier for me to keep meal prep to 30 minutes. Most nights, that means a protein, veggies if I have time, and rice.

I love the mess out of some white rice, but it's not allowed at the challenge level I chose. But I digress.

A friend of mine who is doing the challenge with me, posted a recipe for blueberry coconut muffins on Facebook the other day. Since I needed to find something to replace the occasional donut in the morning with my coffee, I thought this might be perfect. Looking at the ingredients, the list was short and the total prep time was probably 30 minutes.

Totes do-able.

The original ingredients list is:

1 cup coconut flour

¾ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

6 large eggs (RIGHT?!)

½ cup melted coconut oil

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

1 cup of fresh or thawed frozen blueberries

The cooking directions also say to bake for 20-25 minutes.

Here’s the link to the original article and recipe.

Blueberry Coconut Muffins

Well, none of that worked for me and I decided to try something else, of which I will share with you. You're welcome. 

Okay, so, before you even start, make sure everything you use is at room temperature. Reason being, once you melt the coconut oil and it touches anything cold, it’s going to coagulate and get chunky. I thought this was normal the first time around, so I kept going with the recipe. Yes, there were coconut oil chunks in my mix.

Also, one cup of coconut flour is too much. When I mixed it the first time around the flour soaked up all the liquid mix, so it looked like cookie dough. You need to reduce it to ½ cup. It won’t look like much, but trust me, it’s plenty.

As for muffin cups, if you can find the parchment ones (I couldn’t) use those. I used regular birthday ones and the muffins stuck to them a little bit. You can also grease the muffin pan (with coconut oil) and go old school without the cups at all, which is what I should have done, but I didn’t.

Moving along.

So, we know how I was able to make cardboard muffins with the original recipe. Well, at the bottom of the link in the comments for that recipe, there was a video of a man making a revised version of the muffins and used fancy kitchen appliances - none of which I own. But when his video was done, there was a link to a girl filming her mom making the same muffins with just a few adjustments. This is where I also got the tip on working with room temp ingredients and the muffin cups. She had also modified the recipe just a smidge to make the muffins tastier.

Ingredients:

½ cup coconut flour

½ cup coconut oil (melted)

6 eggs

¼ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt (sea salt if you have it)

¼ cup maple syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup fresh or thawed, room temp blueberries

Notes: make sure all ingredients are at room temperature. There are some changes to how much of each ingredient to use in the new recipe as well as the cooking time going up to 35 minutes because we are no longer cooking cardboard food. 

You can get already melted, bottled coconut oil at the store, but it’s $7 and I’m cheap - A jar is only $3-4. Also, the maple syrup is $6-7 with no less expensive alternative, and it’s not approved on the performance level of the challenge. I may replace the syrup with adding stevia to the mix, but I’m not there yet with my skills. I also used a little more than a cup of blueberries. 

Directions:

Next, you’re going to preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prepare your muffin pan with the cups or grease the muffin pan with coconut oil. Then prepare the dry and wet ingredients separately.

In one bowl, mix the flour, baking soda and salt together.

In another one, mix the eggs, oil, syrup and extract.

Add the dry ingredients over the egg mixture. Don’t just dump it in there like a clumsy toddler. I used a whisk to make sure the flour mix didn’t clump, then I used the whisk to mix it all together.

Once I was done pretending I was Martha Stewart with the whisk, I stirred in some blueberries. You should, too. Then whisk some more. Or just mix it with a spoon.

Spoon mix evenly into the parchment cups or the muffin pan.

Bake for 35 minutes or until you can poke a muffin with a toothpick and it comes out clean.

Let the muffins cool in the pan. This recipe makes 12 muffins. Which should last me roughly three days … because not only are these a healthier choice, but they are also very yummy. 

And without further ado … this is how the second batch, which I made at 5 a.m. this morning, turned out: 

Yes, they are tasty. I already had two and it's not even lunch.