Coconut Flour Blueberry Muffins - gluten-free

These healthy, fluffy coconut flour blueberry muffins make a wonderful gluten free snack, dessert, or even breakfast. Lemon juice and zest brighten up the flavors.

How to Make Blueberry Muffins with Coconut Flour

To make this coconut flour blueberry muffins recipe, you should preheat your oven to 375° F. The batter is relatively fast to prepare and shouldn't sit very long before baking. This is because these coconut flour muffins utilize chemical leavening agents like baking powder and baking soda. These start working almost immediately, so it is ideal to get your muffins in the oven shortly after mixing your muffin batter.

To mix the batter, you start by whisking the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. These include coconut flour, tapioca starch, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. The coconut flour and tapioca starch are the dry elements that make up the base of these blueberry coconut flour muffins and are wonderful to have on hand for gluten-free or low carb baking. Coconut flour is also much more widely available these days through either grocery stores, bulk food stores, or online shops. Coconut flour has a slightly sweet and coconut taste which adds another dimension to muffin recipes.

The next step to making the batter is to mix the wet ingredients in another bowl. You can complete this step in either a stand mixer or with handheld beaters if desired, but even a whisk will work well. The wet ingredients include eggs, ricotta cheese, honey, coconut oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla. While you might think that a dessert only requires either lemon juice or zest rather than both, they both impart different elements. The juice adds acidity that helps activate the leaveners. Meanwhile, the zest infuses the batter with the fragrance of fresh lemon.

Next, you stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined. Afterward, fold in the blueberries being sure you don't squish them. The batter should fill 12 muffin cups of a muffin tin lined with silicone or paper liners and should bake into fluffy muffins with blueberries in a total time of 20 to 25 minutes.

Ingredient Substitutions

These coconut flour muffins are great because you can switch out some of the ingredients for others if you don't have certain ones on hand. For example, while ricotta cheese is an excellent choice for these muffins, you could sub in Greek or coconut yogurt instead, if you need them to be dairy-free or paleo. This is a great place to use up small amounts of yogurt that you might have hanging around in your fridge.

Additionally, instead of using honey for your liquid sweetener, you could add maple syrup. Like honey, maple syrup is a more nutritious sweetener than plain white sugar. In fact, it contains minerals like manganese, zinc, and iron. It has a deeper flavour, though, so it may result in a different taste in the final product.

Finally, if you prefer not to bake with coconut oil, you don't have to. Melted butter works as a perfect replacement, offering a delicious butteriness to the baked coconut flour muffins.

Should I Use Fresh or Frozen Blueberries?

The good news about this healthy coconut flour blueberry muffin recipe is that you can use either frozen or fresh blueberries. Fresh blueberries are at their best during the season that they grow in because they will be sweeter and grown closer to home. However, if you are making this muffin recipe in the off-season, I highly recommend you use frozen blueberries. These should have a much better taste than imported blueberries. They may be more affordable as well.

You should not thaw these before folding them into your muffin batter, though, as the juices will discolour it. Adding frozen berries should preserve the pale colour of your batter rather than turning it a bluish purple. The texture of the blueberries after baking will be very similar for fresh or frozen ones.

How to Tell When Gluten Free Muffins are Baked

As with any cake or muffin recipe, it is crucial to be able to tell when they are properly baked for the best results. This is especially crucial as not all ovens bake the same. I have provided a baking time range so that you know to start checking your muffins around the 20-minute mark in order to tell if they are done.

To test the blueberry muffins' doneness, you want to see a hint of golden colour around the edges. Moreover, the muffin tops should have lost their sheen. Another good way to know if they are done is to gently press the tops. If the indentation springs back, the muffins are likely baked, whereas if the indent holds, they need more time.

My final foolproof way of determining whether the muffins are baked is to simply insert a skewer in the center of one of them. In this case, you will bake until a skewer comes out clean. A few dry crumbs are OK, though.

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