Muffins for Evie

Last week we had a cake sale at school to raise money for charity. We have them all the time! One of Darcey’s friends, Evie, is gluten intolerant so I made some muffins especially for her so she wouldn’t feel left out. Evie is seriously cute.

I wanted to do something with a great flavour, rather than just another fairy cake and what with the Cartmel Sticky toffee sauce (which is gluten free!) from a previous taste test still sitting in my cupboard waiting for a trial run, I decided to make banoffee muffins. They’re really, really easy to make and of course taste great!

I got some advice on how to go about making gluten free cakes. Evie’s mum had told me that you can just substitute regular flour for gluten free versions, but when I tried that they haven’t tasted quite as good their gluten counterparts.

On the packaging for the gluten free flour it says add a little extra liquid. With the first batch I added milk which didn’t really work. The cakes came out quite heavy and tasted and looked like mini banana bread cakes. It will come as no surprise to you that I still ate practically all of these cakes, but they definitely weren’t muffins in any way, shape or form!

After the Truefoodies advice (her “Any questions post” was  very well timed! Check it out here) I added an egg for the extra liquid the second time round. BINGO! They were perfect.

I also wanted to see how these came out with a non gluten flour (in which I used the same recipe but with regular flour and only 2 eggs) and they were practically the same.

Ingredients

(makes 6 nice big muffins) 

125g butter (at room temperature)

125g brown sugar (I used dark brown sugar)

125g Gluten free self raising flour (I used Doves which is available in Sainsburys and Tescos)

3 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 banana- mashed up  (the softer and squidgier the better)

Jar of sticky toffee sauce (Cartmel’s is my favourite)

How to make Gluten free  Banoffee muffins

Heat the oven to 170°C. Place muffin cases in the tin ready.

Blend the sugar and butter together. You can use a food mixer / hand held electric mixer for this. Then add all the rest of the ingredients and mix gently until blended but this time use a wooden spoon or a spatula ( I love my silicon spatulas) .

Try not to over mix. The less you mix the better the muffins will bake/ rise/ taste.

Add a heaped tablespoon of mix to each muffin case.

Use a tea spoon to add a dollop of toffee sauce to the centre of each muffin

Cover the sauce with more cake mix, filling the case almost to the top.

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Avoid opening the oven door.

The muffins will rise up out of the paper cases and crack on the top. When they are done (you can tell by lightly pressing the top and if it springs back it’s ready – or you can insert a skewer and if it comes out dry it’s done) Remove the tray from the oven and place it on a wire rack to cool down enough for you to handle the cases and pop them on the wire rack so they can cool completely.

I was really happy with the results of these muffins. Now I have to start thinking about what I can make for Evie for the next cake sale. Any suggestions? Please leave me a comment if you have any ideas what you think a 5 year old gluten free cutie would like.

enjoy!

P.S. A special thank you goes out to Evie for the beautiful necklace she made me with the immaculate repeating pattern. I love it Sweetie!

 Em XX