Going gluten-free (and a yummy muffin recipe)!

I have talked a few times on this blog about being gluten-intolerant, but I have never really explained what that entails and how I found out about it.

About a year and a half ago I started feeling sick whenever I ate. In hindsight this makes sense, because I pretty much ate some form of gluten for every meal. Finally, I told my mom about my troubles. She is a sort of nurse and I almost always consult her before I go to the doctor. She told me it sounded like IBS, and I went home and googled that. And became very downhearted, because IBS means Irritable Bowel Syndrome (or something) and it pretty much means you are allergic to 90% of foods*. Gluten and lactose being on top of the list. But I was feeling worse with every meal, so I decided to give the diet plan a go and cut out gluten and lactose and all sorts of vegetables. I bought coconut milk and lactose-free milk and gluten free pasta etc. After a few days I decided I couldn’t live without milk (I love milk!!) and decided to try to just avoid gluten. Luckily for me, it turned out that gluten was the problem, and I didn’t have IBS, but was “only” gluten-intolerant.

I finally decided to go to the doctor to get a professional confirmation of my findings, but after being gluten-free for about 2 weeks, I was having no difficulties. The doctor told me it sounded like I was right, and then he took a blood sample to test for gluten intolerance. Apparently the test came up clean, because you are supposed to continue eating gluten right up until the blood is drawn. But I guess my doctor didn’t know that, and I didn’t either at the time. When I got the news that the test was negative, I decided to test it myself and ate a KitKat. And immediately felt sick again. So no gluten for me anymore!

I have been totally gluten-free for about 6 months now, with the exception of a veggie burger, that apparently had bulgur in it, and made me so sick I couldn’t eat for the rest of that day. I haven’t had any problems, as long as I stay away from gluten, but I must say, it is a bit of a struggle sometimes. There is wheat in SO many things, even things you would never suspect, like a ton of different sweets and a lot of ready-meals. Shopping now consists of a whole lot of reading labels and being disappointed when I discover yet another thing that has gluten in it. 

Before I learned about my gluten-problem I ate a lot of pasta, bread and cake. So much cake! And ever since I discovered my problem, I have been on the hunt for the perfect substitute for all those things. And I have to confess, I am giving up! I consider just using readymade gluten free flour blends kind of cheating, so I have tried using almond flour, rice flour, potato starch etc. You can bake some decent cookies with almond flour, but nothing else is really the same. The cauliflower pizza base just doesn’t give you that pizza feel, and almond flour brings a weird sweet note to your savory breads that I don’t like. Coconut flour makes everything really dry and has a weird consistency. Pasta made from rice flour is only acceptable when freshly made. When it gets cold it gets weirdly hard and crumbly, and reheating it doesn't really work either. 

So I have given up and I am now testing out my old flour recipes using the gluten-free mix you can buy in shops. I tried making pizza, as I think this is what I miss the most, but even with gluten-free flour it is not the same. A lot of gluten-free things are quite dry and crumbly, and pizza bases are not meant to be like that. But the other day I made some of my favorite muffins, and they work really well with the gluten free flour, so I decided to share the recipe. These muffins don’t get too dry, I think, so that is lovely for once, and you can freeze them, so they will last longer. Or you can just eat them all in a week like I did…

Chocolate muffins:

The recipe makes around 18 muffins

Ingredients:

250 g of flour (wheat or gluten free)

1 teaspoon of baking soda

225 g of sugar

50 g of cocoa powder

1 teaspoon of vanilla sugar or vanilla extract

125 ml of milk

100 ml melted butter (I actually use this storebought liquid mix of butter and oil, but I have no idea what it’s called in English)

250 ml yoghurt

1 egg

100 g chocolate chips

Turn on the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. 

Grease or line a muffin tin with paper muffin liners .

Mix all the dry ingredients (except the chocolate chips) in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another. Mix the two and stir until just combined. Don’t overmix! Then mix in the chocolate chips and spoon the mixture into your muffin tin. 

Bake for 13-15 minutes. The muffins are ready when a skewer stuck into the middle comes out batter free. There might be some melted chocolate chip stuck to the skewer so don’t confuse this with uncooked batter. 

Let cool a little and enjoy. These muffins are especially good, when still warm, as the melted chocolate chips will be gooey and yummy inside. But they are also good cold the next day (if they last that long). 

Forgive the lack of pictures as I ate them all, before I remembered that I should probably document it! And I was kind of expecting them to suck with the glutenfree flour, so I didn't feel like documenting the disappointment. But I was pleasantly surprised! 

* DISCLAIMER: I am no doctor and if you think you might have food allergies of any sort I encourage you to seek out your doctor and get some professional advice. This is just my personal experince of the matter.