It all started with a butternut squash or a butternut pumpkin in the evening. My son asked if I can make soup and as I happened to have butternut squash at home, I decided to make a pumpkin soup from it. But since pumpkin was too big, I thought what to do with the leftover pumpkin as I did not want to freeze it I decided to cut the pumpkin into pieces and put all of it in the oven. And then I thought I have actually never made pumpkin muffins, and why not make muffins from the leftover pumpkin for breakfast for next morning. But I also did not want to risk that kids would not eat the pumpkin muffins and decided to make two versions of muffins- pumpkin and blueberry.
I have made blueberry muffins in the past and have also two recipes in one post in my blog, but since I did not have cassava flour nor enough almond flour at home, I thought I will try an do them from gluten-free oat flour (I had not grind oats with a coffee-grinder to get the flour). But I love creativity in the kitchen and be in the flow when making food.
Gluten-free and sugar-free pumpkin and blueberry muffins
Makes 12
Ingredients
1 3/4 cups of gluten-free oat flour
1 tsp if baking powder
1/2 tsp of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt
1/2 tsp of cinnamon
1/3 cups of coconut oil
1.5 tbsp of raw honey
2 room temperature eggs
1 cup of plain Greek yoghurt
2 tsp of vanilla extract or vanilla powder
1 cup of blueberries and and 1 cup of pureed butternut squash
1/2 tsp of ground cardamon
Almond flakes and hulled hemp seeds (hemp hearts)
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 215C (400F).
For pumpkin muffins, you need to have baked the butternut squash pieces in the oven for 25min at 190C (375F).
In one bigger bowl whisk together all the dry ingredients (oat flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon).
In another smaller pot mix together melted coconut oil and honey (I melt on a very low heat on the stove). Then beat in eggs, add Greek yoghurt and finally vanilla.
Mix the wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Before you add blueberries into the batter, divide the batter into half- putting half in one bowl and the other half of the batter in another bowl. In a separate bowl mix 1tsp of almond flour and blueberries. Very gently fold the blueberries into one half of the the batter.
Into other half of the batter, mix in the butternut squash puree and cardamon.
Grease the muffin tray with butter and put the paper muffin liners into the tray. Then scoop both blueberry batter and butternut squash batter into the liners. Sprinkle the top of the muffins with almond flakes and hemp hearts (I put almond flakes on blueberry muffins and hemp hearts on pumpkin muffins).
Put muffin tray in the oven and bake for 20 minutes until the muffins are golden brown. Cool them down slightly before eating. You can freeze these muffins as well, but likely if you have a family, they won't last more than half a day.
So this was a journey from a butternut squash soup to pumpkin and blueberry muffins- dinner, breakfast and lunch covered. You can also upgrade those muffins, by adding chopped nuts, raisins, cocoa nibs into the batter as well before baking.
Enjoy!