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Childhood Chocolate Chip Muffins

When I was in primary school, my absolute favourite baked good was mum’s homemade milk-chocolate chip muffins. They were seriously the best. Light, fluffy and loaded with sweet and creamy chocolate chips. Like most kids, I had quirky ways of eating certain foods. I loved nothing more than to nibble the buttery muffin parts around the choccie chips, leaving big mounds of chocolate sections for an epic chocolate-in-my-mouth “explosion” afternoon tea finale.

The sad thing was that the original recipe wasn’t even remotely okay for someone with autoimmunity and serious gut issues. Once I developed an autoimmune disease in my early teens, and started experiencing the anxiety, panic attacks, depression and severe intestinal permeability that generally go hand in hand with live disease, I noticed that these darling treats were triggering episodes where I’d get heart palpitations, break-out in sweats and then spend the next 24-48 hours feeling “on edge”. They had to go (along with pretty much all other wheat and white-sugar containing products).

I’ve recently started going through old recipes and tweaking them to create a product that is as close to the “real deal” recipe as possible, but without ingredients that flare up autoimmunity. I’m not currently eating butter, eggs or rapadura sugar, as I’m still recovering from some iatrogenic health conditions that manifested last year, however, in the absence of gallbladder dysfunction and in cases where autoimmunity has been in remission for a year or more, I think these muffins make a relatively nutritious alternative to their processed, refined counterparts.

Ground cashews give this recipe the light colour of traditional white flour and lend a buttery flavour – reminisce of my childhood fave. Real organic butter is melted on the stovetop with rapadura sugar to create a sweet caramel flavour for the batter, whilst the egg binds everything together and the bicarb helps the muffins to rise as though they actually contain gluten. A generous pinch of seaweed salt and a sprinkle of vanilla bean powder act as natural flavour enhancers, and the organic dark chocolate chips, whilst containing cane sugar, are free of the milk solids and soy lethicin found in most chocolate chips on the market today.

If you’ve felt deprived of ridgy-didge chocolate muffins because you’ve been an absolute star, avoiding foods that you know make you sick, then I hope you love this recipe as much as my taste testers – one of whom is Phil, my stepdad who generally prefers his cakes full of gluten . Even he agrees that these cakes don’t taste “healthy” or “alternative” – winner winner chocolate chips muffins for dinner!

Childhood Chocolate Chip Muffins

Makes 9

  • 1 1/2 cups raw cashews
  • 1/2 cup rapadura or coconut sugar
  • 1/2 cup non-dairy milk (I usually use coconut)
  • 1 tsp aluminium-free bicarb soda
  • 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
  • 1/4 tsp. pink salt
  • 1/4 cup melted organic butter or coconut oil
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup organic, dark chocolate chips (or chopped dark chocolate if that’s easier to source)

Preheat oven to 170 degrees fan forced and line a muffin tin with 9 muffin cases. I use biodegradable ones from ‘If You Care’.

Blend all ingredients bar the chocolate chips in a food processor of blender until a smooth, creamy batter eventuates.

Fold through chocolate chips and divine batter among prepared muffin cases.

Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown and cooked through.

These last in the fridge in an airtight container for 5 days or can be frozen for 2 months. They taste far better fresh.

Recipe Notes

I love the Changing Habits rapadura sugar in this recipe because it’s so caramel-y. Organic coconut sugar would work as well though if that’s what you’ve already got in your pantry

You can use any unrefined salt, but I love the Changing Habits  seaweed salt because it has added dulse (seaweed) flakes for a whack of the mineral iodine. Iodine is essential for thyroid function and thus healthy metabolism and hormone balance

I found these organic, all natural, dark chocolate chips at my local supermarket. I love that they are just cacao powder and butter and organic sugar – no emulsifiers or artificial sweeteners in sight

You can omit chocolate chips and add a heaped teaspoon of cinnamon to the batter for cinnamon donut flavoured muffins. Top this variation with a teaspoon of melted organic butter, and a sprinkling of rapadura sugar and cinnamon – this is seriously tasty and a nice change of pace for those strange little vegemites  that aren’t fussed with chocolate.