Gluten-Free Blueberry Muffin Recipe- My New Fave

Tender gluten-free dairy-free blueberry muffins, warm from the oven.

Baking a batch of fresh blueberry muffins is one of my favorite simple pleasures. I do it early, before the summer day turns sultry and my body slows to a liquid ballet of movement designed to conserve every last salty drop of intention and energy my creaky, vanilla lotioned body can muster. I rise and bake to the morning sun, stirring my batter half asleep, sipping hot coffee (my last remaining addiction). A local mockingbird sings his deceit outside the open apartment window. He is remarkable in his uncanny repertoire. A gifted mimic. Silhouetted high against the North Hollywood sky, perched on the tallest utility pole.

I've been thinking about all the thoughtful comments on my last post- my message in a bottle. Your words were a balm and a message tossed back. Received and pondered. Talked about and appreciated.

I've been reading this week (as I always do). Finding books a provocative companion. Words that illuminate and poke. Shared stories that send shivers of recognition, trigger anger, or tug one's soul (kicking and whining) into that impossible place- that place where you don't want to go. The stuff that scares you.

Because it might be true.

And it might be painful. And it just might ask you to consider something. Something hard. Something true.

I've been reading about this business of being a daughter. This isn't the first time I've looked at this subject. I am no stranger to the postmodern Jungian women's psychology section. But reading a book at twenty is one thing. You bring to its wisdom your newly hatched self-hood, your fresh experience, your familial-infused expectations (and prejudices). The expectations, assumptions and dreams of a young woman. You are the heroine, the daughter starting out on your journey, looking at a long and winding road ahead. So you read. And listen. And play with ideas. You see what fits. And what doesn't.

And then you stand, stirring blueberry muffin batter on a clear July morning, decades later. And here, now, the words ring deeper. And the truth stings darker. There is a lifetime of days spiraling out beneath you and above you (because by now you know that time is not linear, or finite, like some calendar). And the same words vibrate with a different meaning, engraved with experience and regret. The same words illuminate as if from a different light source. Not from the world.

From within you.

And so here I am. A daughter, still. Learning something old as if it is new. And discovering truths as if for the first time, arriving, as T. S. Elliot wrote, where we started.


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Gluten-Free Multigrain Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Multigrain gluten-free lemon poppy seed muffins.

I usually don't bake in the summer. I mean. Do you? Who in their right mind likes to crank up the oven when it's hot and steamy outside? At my age darling, I'm sticky enough as it is. Hot flashing and fanning myself with the latest issue of AARP as I bounce and waggle on one of those bubblegum hued balance balls, lurching at my desk like a pear-bottomed yoga reject seeking not enlightenment, I am sorry to tell you, but the promise of burning three hundred extra calories as I sit and write. Apparently using one's sacred core (or is it sacroiliac?) to perch atop a ridiculously big ball with a penchant for rolling sideways requires fuel. More fuel than say, slumping.

Or lying on the sofa reading a book. With the oscillating fan on high.

Which is what I'd rather be doing.

Preferably with a bar of organic dark chocolate.

I would rather keep the kitchen cool. By not cooking (that's why The Goddess- in her infinite wisdom- invented tomato sandwiches).

But a certain husband had a craving.

For a lemon poppy seed muffin. Our son planted this idea in his head last week, during an impromptu visit. Said son was blithely munching on a lovely looking gluten-free lemon poppy seed muffin. Freshly baked. Adapted from one of my muffin recipes.

He mentioned, in passing, it was fabulous.

His secret?

I used a little cornmeal, he told us.

And thus the muffin craving was born.

And who am I to deny my husband.

He buys me dark chocolate after all.

And turns on the fan. So that I don't have to get up from the sofa.


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Gluten-Free Pasta Frittata with Kale (Dairy-Free)

Karina's Gluten-Free Pasta Frittata with Kale (Dairy-Free)

It's crunch time here at Casa Allrich. Moving day looms. Packing has begun. I've been sitting on the floor like a cast-off princess in a fairy tale assigned to her individuating task, combing not through haystacks or mountains of tiny grain but musty boxes of thirty-five-year-old letters, stacks of faded photographs and yellowed clippings, evidence of another life allegedly my own. I am struck most by the persistent echoes, the parallels spiked with the quirky twists of fate that led me here, to now, the line between seeking and creating blurring into a narrative that persists in your life like an ache.

We seek what we need to become. We long for the parts of ourselves we discarded out of necessity or people-pleasing acquiescence. Accommodation is a common theme in many a woman's life. Mid-life sharpens this trend into focus in subtle ways. When you begin counting seasons, and fewer summers await you, each choice you've picked up to now- and every discarded loss- becomes bittersweet and ripe with meaning.

All this contemplation and dust as we recycle the last remaining things we carry.

Our life has been whittled and sanded and simplified these last six years. An empty nest has its gifts. From the east coast to the west coast we have pared down and let go with each move (five times in six years). No original furniture remains. We own a sofa (a floor model bought in Marina Del Rey). A bed. Two desks. The truckload of books and old paintings is now a carload.

My boxes of cookbooks have shrunk from twenty to two.

Our move to Studio City is a gesture toward community (writing and film). A move closer to family (both sons- and a new daughter-in-law- live closer to Studio City than Redondo Beach). A move away from the ocean, but toward sun. From fog to heat. Our new neighborhood is a quiet, leafy one, framed in well tended white fenced gardens that rival Provincetown. We walked the block last week. Waist high lavender bushes, roses, iris and honeysuckle feed me in ways concrete and steel cannot. Small town New England is in my bones, I guess. And forever will be.

Today I offer you a recipe spun from the magic of leftover brown rice spaghetti and eggs- a creamy, light frittata. Perfect for when you're simply too tired to cook. Or you have nothing in the fridge but a carton of eggs, half a bag of kale salad and last night's leftover spaghetti in eggplant marinara.

The "cheese" I used was a vegan "mozzarella" (my current favorite is Vegan Gourmet).



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Gluten-Free Zucchini Quinoa Breakfast Cake

Karina's Gluten-Free Zucchini Quinoa Breakfast Cake

Remember those maple sweetened almond zucchini mini-muffins? I do. They've become one of our favorite grab-and-go gluten-free treats. I tuck a bag of them- fresh out of the freezer- into my bulging purse knapsack beach bag tote whenever we venture far afield. Like. The Valley. Because, well. You never know. It can get crazy. In L.A. you might end up jammed on the 405. Stuck as in four lanes = a parking lot stuck. Stuck as in, Dude that's my hunger growling louder than Kurt Cobain's rasp on the rattling radio speaker pleading, What else could I be? All apologies.

I know this from experience. I learned the hard way (the way I learn most things in life). Driving in L.A. can lead to stop-n-go squatting in the baking sun where is my nail file and why did I leave the apartment without food and water and ice in a cooler panic. Because the thirty-three minutes it took yesterday to get to Studio City is seventy-five minutes today.

That's when I started imagining a zucchini cake. For breakfast. On the 405. Heading north (allegedly). To sign a lease. On a new apartment with an ample well planned kitchen and an open living room with a fireplace. And two balconies- one sunny for growing herbs, one shady in the afternoon, facing a quiet leafy green street lined with lavender gardens and rose bushes and honeysuckle and song birds.

We'll be moving in two weeks.

Your intrepid Gluten-Free Goddess has some packing to do.

Good thing we baked a zucchini quinoa cake.


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Gluten-Free Whole Grain Strawberry Muffins - Berry Goodness

Gluten-free low sugar whole grain strawberry muffins.

With all the recent news about sugar, I've been thinking about muffins. And not just any ordinary, ho-hum, run-of-the-mill, starchy, gluten-free muffins. Nope. A tender, whole grain, lower sugar, vanilla scented muffin that bursts with fresh strawberry flavor. Warm from the oven, these pleasantly grainy breakfast treats are pull-apart soft with juicy bites of strawberry. Sweet- but not too sweet.

I used pure maple syrup for the primary sweetener, and a mere two tablespoons of organic brown sugar. And now for the interesting part.

I also experimented with no xanthan gum.

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Green Chile Egg Bake

This puffy golden egg bake is easy (and pretty enough for brunch guests).

This simple egg bake recipe flirts with being a souffle. She imagines herself in an Anais Nin novel, puffy and voluptuous, trembling on a sunlit, blossom strewn table, about to be devoured by a Henry Miller style character, an unknown writer, all bluster and Brooklyn guff, with a surprising, childlike glint to his laughter.

In a Kerouac novel she imagines herself liquid, a stream of golden beats syncopated in hot opposition to the heart's rhythm, strangely, vertigo defyingly more in tune with how the stars blink- on and off- cradling her humble, unassuming beginnings in feather injected hay, spinning cool and restless past the farmhouse windows lit yellow by a single lamp on the center of a wooden kitchen table strewn with cereal coupons and finger smudged newspaper and coffee cups stained not with lipstick but with infinite tiny cracks, scenting the air with morning that rushes into this author's highway memory like a distant train whistle crooning its tug toward reckless freedom, toward shed dreams and mockingbird awakenings that mimic the familiar just to confuse you, just to keep you anchored, just to clip you from flying in your own, crazy trajectory, your one chance at what might be possible.

Then again.

Maybe she's just an egg recipe.

With attitude.

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Gluten-Free Pineapple Coconut Muffins

Tender pineapple muffins with toasted coconut.

I thought I'd reprise this important post (and fabulous muffin recipe) from a year ago- when the gluten-free community was buzzing from insults on every side. Consider this my UNapology for living gluten-free.

April Fools Day looms. But you won't find any tricks up my sleeve. Unlike the greater, broader world beyond my kitchen that apparently harbors a few individuals contemptuous of living gluten-free. This was a tough week to be a celiac. Assaults ranged from the merely mean-spirited to the stunningly ill informed. There was the alleged chef in Colorado (I say alleged, because it turns out this nudnik may have actually been a waiter) ridiculing gluten-free diners (the term he favored was "idiots") and crowing on Facebook that he passes off regular pasta as gluten-free (join the lively discussion here). There was the Dr. Oz show calling gluten-free a "fad diet", asking is it "just a myth?" (in full disclosure, I believe he meant as a weight loss tool, as a certain gluten-free celebrity has been claiming in her g-free book- ironically, featured on Dr. Oz last year). And finally, there was a famous food blogger-turned-author whose foodie envied blog-to-movie deal has apparently not cultivated much compassion for those of us stricken with gluten sensitivity. She barked on Facebook, "If I have to read one more thing about going gluten free I'm going to stomp on someone's face." And more than one person agreed with her. One of her fans (a food blogger) added, it's "too precious".

Strap on your helmets, Campers. There's not a lot of love out there.

I know this. You know this. Some of you have even shared stories about not only eye-rolling waiters and could-care-less food preparers, but family members sneaking gluten into what they feed you, just to "see what happens". Just to test you.

Let me repeat that.

Family. Feeding you gluten. On purpose.

No wonder strangers feel they can openly spout contempt. If we are not respected within the bosom of our own clan, our flesh and blood, how can we expect random strangers to care?

The truth is, they don't.


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Gluten-Free Pumpkin Crumb Cake

A light, pumpkin coffee cake for your holiday brunch.

The Winter Solstice will be here soon. The holiday frenzy of gift buying and light stringing and cookie making is officially upon us. Everywhere I cast my gaze I am pummeled with messages. SHOP! BAKE! SPARKLE! And that's okay. Because I understand the hoopla. I know where this urge comes from. The itch to make a ruckus in the dark. To sing, brave and clear, cupping our tiny flames against Midwinter's long night.

The California sun hangs soft and low in the sky, as pale as ice cream. Hours feel clipped. Afternoons are shorter and shorter. Night creeps ever closer. Darkness will soon reign over light.

But only for a moment. One single, solitary, longest night of the year.

No wonder we gather to celebrate. The rebirth of light is no small thing. And a brand new year awaits. Front loaded with promise, and changes hoped for.

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Gluten-Free Banana Nut Bread Recipe

Warm from the oven gluten-free banana nut bread. Just a fad?

I hope you all enjoyed a safe and nourishing Thanksgiving holiday, stuffed with all good things- familial affection and laughter, kindness, acceptance and generosity of spirit. Food for the soul as well as food for the body. I hope your table was inviting, inclusive and beautiful- and untarnished by condescension, resentment, or the snorting ridicule of your Uncle Stu (whose politics alone are enough to give any thinking person a spike of schpilkis).

Because out there in the cold cruel world, Darling, some folks apparently (still) view our gluten-free lifestyle through a jaded foodie lens, believing, first of all, that gluten-free anything is never going to taste anything but awful, and second, that this whole gluten-free trend (their word not mine) is a fad not worthy of serious consideration and compassion. Apart from the standard (and always brief) lip service that non-afflicted food writers, non-GF bloggers and journalists pay to celiac disease, adhering to the medical treatment that is a gluten-free diet is degraded- for that sexy topical hook- to a bandwagon. An eating disorder. A diet by choice.

They dub it a controversy. 

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Karina's Gluten-Free Pancakes

The best gluten-free pancakes I've ever eaten.

When I was small and clueless I ate the world in tiny bites. I chewed apologetically, counting each deliberate grind in time to the spiral beats of a song in my head that only I could hear. A tune not unlike a mosaic of bird calls, and the powdery flutter of wings feeding on the garden lit by young Mozart's star.

Colors were a mysterious and spiritual language infused with deep logic and meaning. A green Jello box invited tunneling and confusion, but the sweet brush of balsam as I sought asylum beneath its rooted symmetry petted my pining fatherless heart.

Trust is green and hard to paint, but so is betrayal.

Not only the betrayal by others. The betrayal you participate in.

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Gluten-Free Baked Donuts

Gluten-free cake donuts with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

Apparently it is National Donut Day. But don't be grumpy, my celiac lovelies. I've got a gluten-free donut recipe for you, from the friendly archives of Gluten-Free Goddess.

For those of us born and raised on the East Coast- specifically, near Boston, Massachusetts- a certain coffee BF with a hole in the center is spelled donut. Not doughnut. Why so not-snobby casual, you might wonder? Why switch the ough to o when Boston's rep is more of a Paul Revere and cobblestones conservative town than say, oh I don't know-- maybe, rainbow flag flying West Hollywood? Dunkin Donuts is the culprit, I suspect- that ubiquitous New England coffee and doughnut chain from Quincy, MA, infamous for the tag line, Time to make the donuts! muttered by Fred the Baker in television ads for a good fifteen years.


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Gluten-Free Dinner Rolls

Fresh baked gluten-free dinner rolls- warm and tender.

We've been slurping lots of soup this Spring while the temperatures hover well below my chilly bones preference of 72 degrees. I hate to complain about 52 degrees, but, honestly. I'm shivering like a kitten in a Steve Martin movie. This is L.A. not New Hampshire. Where is my sunshine and technicolor blue sky?

Hiding its good humor behind wrinkled duvets of fuzzy gray clouds, that's where.

So we make gluten-free soup.

But the soup needs a companion. Our potage is lonely. And so I play matchmaker. I've been inviting gluten-free roll recipes to come and play. I've been flirting with their quirks and grainy idiosyncrasies, trying to be a good host. Coaxing their prickly little batters into behaving. As in, taste GOOD. And I've had some almost there success. But nothing to brag about. Nothing blog worthy.

Until today. These rolls are a balance of whole grain flavor and softness. Just crusty enough. These were tender and lovely warm from the oven. Not gummy. Not heavy. Not too grainy.

Just right.


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Gluten-Free Carrot Muffins

Wake up with a warm and lovely carrot muffin.

This is my first muffin recipe for the New Year. A tender little bundle of gluten-free joy. So cute and sunny. I love the color. The subtly fragrant texture of finely grated organic carrots, coconut flour and breakfast quinoa flakes. A hint of cinnamon and ginger. A bite of raisin. Seriously chai worthy. And more fiber rich than say, a powdered donut. Or your average gluten-free bagel which is nothing but starch. This a treat you can eat without too much guilt.

Just a smidge.

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Gluten-Free Pumpkin Pancakes

Pumpkin pancakes with apricot jam and pepitas.

I haven't made gluten-free pancakes in a long time. I am- typically- not a big breakfast person. A solo slice of warm gluten-free toast glistening with melting peanut butter and a hot coconut milk chai usually does it for me. So what possessed me to change my routine? Why did I suddenly have a deep growling desire for pancakes?

In a word: pumpkin. My favorite cucurbit.

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Gluten-Free English Muffins

Lovely, toasty gluten-free English muffins. I kid you not.

After four attempts we have a gluten-free English muffin we can toast with pride. An English muffin worthy of jam. Worthy of peanut butter. Or a sit down breakfast. Heck, worthy of breakfast in bed. These warm and golden little babies are too crispy-tender good to munch running to the bus stop or strapped in your car, thinking about the onslaught of your daily tasks. These muffins deserve a proper plate. A mug of tea. Your Sunday morning iTunes playlist.

I'm not sure why a simple English muffin is so tricky to recreate gluten-free (and in my case, also vegan- no milk and eggs to help the stubborn gluten-free flours fluff and rise). I thought it would be a snap. So I perused Alton Brown's recipes for inspiration, found his English muffin recipe, and did a quick gluten-free casein-free conversion. It seemed doable. Although I knew from experience that using a griddle to cook gluten-free muffins would be trouble.

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Gluten-Free Blueberry Muffins with Almond Flour

Tender almond flour muffins bursting with fresh blueberries.

Today I am sharing a new gluten-free muffin recipe, and a health update on my Gut Instinct post. I know, I know. Another muffin recipe? Most food bloggers are waxing poetic about grilling burgers and dyeing frosting for their red, white, and blue recipes this upcoming July Fourth weekend, but the truth is, Babycakes, I'm just not into it. I'm in such a different head space that it almost seems comical to me, reading headlines in my Inbox about the "Ultimate Burger", or how July Fourth wouldn't be a real celebration without a hunk of charred All-American meat or a Philly cheese dog. 

Um. What? 

Our founding fathers might disagree. In fact, wasn't Benjamin Franklin a vegetarian?

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Gluten-Free Blueberry Crumb Cake Recipe

Blueberry crumb cake- gluten-free summer goodness.

Sometimes in life- when you least expect it- the stars are kind. Synchronicity smiles. And disparate pieces of your dreams bump up against one another and nestle snug into place. I'm referring, of course, to my dream of California. Summer by the Pacific, walking the beach, shopping the Farmers' Market, reuniting with my sons. Cooking. Writing. Haunting book stores and coffee shops.

I've been trying to get there for two years.

No, the house hasn't sold yet. But Plan B is under way. We found the elusive summer rental. Just when I thought it wasn't going to happen. A sublet in Santa Monica. In the nick of time. A lovely, light filled creative space. With a sweet kitchen. So I am back to making lists, mapping our drive south to Flagstaff, AZ, turning west to aim for the coast. I am lying in the dark alert, at 3 AM, pondering not the mysteries of the collective unconscious, not the properties of desire and effect, quantum attraction and Zen detachment, but favorite flavors of chocolate chip cookies. I am imagining herbed sandwich wraps (recipe soon!). Bags of salted popcorn. iTunes playlists. And this, a new blueberry cake recipe I felt inspired to bake. With a cinnamon crumb topping.

I think it's perfect to pack for a two-day road trip, don't you? Or even a two minute trip, scooting across the back yard barefoot to visit your best friend and neighbor. She'll make the coffee. Or iced chai. While you unrap the cake you get to eat, too.

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Gluten-Free Banana "Crumpets"

Split and grill these sweet no yeast "crumpets" for extra flavor.

I started out craving a scone. Then it turned into a crumpet. Not a traditional crumpet. A crumpet without yeast. And sweet. Not because I have anything against yeast (I dig my English Muffins bigtime), but because I had a bevy of ripe bananas hanging out on my kitchen counter, whispering to me, coaxing me to imagine a new recipe and highlight their fragrant banana awesomeness. So that's how it all started.

But I was low on gluten-free flours.

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Karina's Gluten-Free Quinoa Breakfast Bars

Gluten-free quinoa breakfast bars, Baby.

We were treatless this week. Specifically, breakfast treatless. No Pear Polenta Muffins were hiding in the freezer. No Apple Cake with Cranberries. In fact, the only food items in the freezer were a solo bottle of organic vodka and a bag of frozen cranberries (does vodka count as food?). Which turned out to be a good thing. Because we had to bake. [Had to!] So we experimented (send smooches to Steve for initiating said experiment; if it were not for him, Dear Reader, you'd be looking at an archived recipe today).

As the breakfast treats were baking I started thinking (always dangerous). I started pondering (even more dangerous) why certain people believe they have things AFO. All Figured Out. And they'll tell you so, of course, spooning out advice in words that taste metallic. Like teeth fillings. They have all the neat little answers for you, judged and predigested, wrapped snug in tidy psychic ribbons.

If only life were that simple.

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Blueberry Corn Muffins

Summery, fresh blueberry corn muffins- gluten-free.

August is fast approaching. I am trying not to think about it. I am baking blueberry corn muffins. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. Or so I'm told. I am constructing my best defense to put off thinking about hauling our California-loving selves back to the stoic hills of Ojo Caliente, 913 miles away from my sons, 915 miles from the ocean.

Anyone out there want to buy a charming casita with mesa sunset views? Two kiva fireplaces. Saltillo tile floors. Vigas. All the rustic Southwest vibe you could ask for. Price reduced (thrice).

To less than what we paid for it.

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