Just Baking

A couple of weeks ago, the question was posed to my girlfriend on what she would do if she couldn’t have wheat and would have to lead a gluten-free lifestyle. She loves bread and pasta and she thought it definitely would be very tough. I don’t think she was aware of all the resources available online with recommendations and recipes for gluten-free food. So my next trip to the store, I picked up some gluten-free flours. Oat flour was among them. Now I was thinking that since oats aren’t wheat, that means gluten-free. I went ahead and made these muffins, thinking I was making something without gluten. Later, after talking to my girlfriend about bringing some in for a coworker with Celiac Disease, I double-checked the recipe and the ingredients to be sure. I was using Bob’s Red Mill oat flour and when I examined the package, I couldn’t find the gluten-free blurb. I thought this was odd and went to the website and found they did not consider it to be gluten-free. Apparently Bob’s has a whole facility devoted to gluten-free products and oats are not processed there so their oats are processed in the same facility as wheat, thus contaminating them. I learned something new.

These muffins came out great. Slightly dense and moist, the flavor was wonderful. The blackberry and oat flavors complimented each other well.

Blackberry Oat Muffins
This post was tagged as “Gluten-Free” because of the discussion, not the recipe. The recipe is not gluten-free.

Makes about 12 muffins

3 1/2 cups oat flour
1 cup instant oats
1 Tbls. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup whole milk
2 large eggs
1 cup roughly chopped blackberries

Preheat the oven to 500° F.

Combine the eggs, oil, and milk in a bowl, mix well, and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients (all the remaining ingredients except the blackberries) and whisk to combine. Now add in the blackberries and give a quick stir to cover with the flour mixture. Finally, add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture and stir until everything is just mixed. Don’t over mix.

Spoon the mixture into greased or paper-lined muffin cups. Fill each to the top and mound slightly in the center if possible.

Place the pan in the oven and drop the oven temperature down to 425° F. Bake for 16-18 minutes. About halfway through, rotate the pan 180°. The muffins are done when a cake tester comes out clean and they spring back when pressed lightly. Remove from the oven, let cool in the pan for about 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Since I made the original batch of these muffins, I’ve made them 3 more times, actually all in the past week. In one batch I cut the vegetable oil in half, only used 2/3 cup of sugar, and used buttermilk instead of whole milk. I thought they were good but I tried repeating that batch again and it was dry. I think I overmixed and overbaked that batch. Folding to just mix should still have a tannish batter, overmixing makes it purple and these were purple and time got away from me while baking them. These are pretty much done at the 16 minute mark and I went way too far past that. I made this recipe again tonight, followed the instructions exactly, and they turned out great. And yes, I am considering renaming my site to Muffins, Et Cetera.