Gluten-free Zucchini Muffins

Lil' Bear was diagnosed with a gluten intolerance a little less than a year ago, and I am still in the process of learning to cook gluten free. My wonderful MIL sent me the book Babycakes.

I have been slowly working my way through the book, and today Lil' Bear and I made some gluten-free zucchini muffins. I am usually very skeptical when it comes to gluten free products, usually because they involve tapioca flour which for some reason I cannot stand the taste of, but Lil' Bear has loved nearly everything that I have made gluten free. It helps that he is about the least picky eater known to man. I mean, I don't think there are too many 2-year-olds that are happy to eat a bowl of salad. Anyhow, these muffins are amazingly delicious. If you aren't gluten-free, you can easily substitute regular wheat flour, and I am sure they would be just as good.

Here are the ingredients: (I had to make some substitutions from those in Erin McKenna's book as I didn't have a few things on hand, and the following ingredients are what I used)

2 cups Bob's Red Mill All-purpose Gluten-Free Flour (calls for spelt flour in book)
1/2 cup milled flax
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 Tablespoon ground ginger
1/2 vegetable oil
1 cup honey (calls for 3/4 cup agave nectar in book which I would have rather used)
3/4 cup soy milk (calls for rice milk)
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups shredded zucchini

Preheat oven to 325. Rather than lining the muffin tin with paper liners, we just sprayed with nonstick spray.

In a medium bowl (as you can see we used a pretty big bowl to avoid spills with little hands mixing), whisk together the flour, flax meal, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and ginger. Add the oil, agave nectar, rice milk, and vanilla to the dry ingredients and stir until the batter is smooth. Using a plastic spatula, gently fold in the zucchini just until evenly distributed throughout the mixture.

Since there are surprisingly no eggs in this recipe, I could actually let him lick the spoon with a clear conscience.

This is what the batter looks all mixed up. It is quite watery.

Pour 1/3 cup batter into each prepared cup, almost filling it. (We overfilled just a little bit as our muffin tops were a litte out of control). Bake the muffins on the center rack for 22 minutes, rotating the tin 180 degrees after 15 minutes.

And here is the finished product, absolutely delicious. And we had a lot of fun making it together, plus I learned of a new snack option for Lil' Bear - raw zucchini, no kidding, that kid wanted to eat handfuls of the stuff while we were making the muffins. Oh, I am so blessed to have a non-picky eater :)