Experiment Day

My husband decided he needed to at least try to avoid wheat for at least a week, if not forever.  I really hope it doesn't come to that.  Gluten free appears to be so expensive.   Anyway, in order to help with the first week anyway I decided to try a few different things so he can get some carbs on his no-body-fat body.  Yup the great wife that I am, I have sacrificed myself and taken ALL his fat and claimed it for my own.  Seriously the poor guy is skin and bones.  I on the other hand am more like skin and fat, I don't even think I can find the bones through all that anymore.  Anyway he has a 50K race this weekend and needs those extra few carbs. (30miles, ya, I know, I only hope my kids don't get those weird genes)  SO  as I was shopping today I checked out the various 'special' flours.  Most recipes I have found for gluten-free bread call for a variety of those flours all mixed together. (tapioca, garbanzo, brown rice, etc.)  But the prices are sky high for a tiny bag.  That would make two batches of, say, biscuits about $8.00.   YIKES!  But you have to buy all the flours at an average of $6 a bag.  Let me see.... add the five..... carry the 2....= Yup, not going to do it until it becomes a life threatening issue.

So, being the frugal person I am, I decided to try and whip up my own rice flour and see what I come up
with.  Rice Muffins.  I search the web for recipes that don't have too much of odd things like Xanthum gum, that I don't just happen to have sitting around my house.  I whip out my wheat grinder and put in about a cup of plain long grain white rice.  This is just to clean out some of the wheat flour that hangs on no matter how hard you try to get it all off.  Ya, dh is going to be contaminated a little bit.   Then I run about 3 cups of rice through and just because it sounds groovy, 2 handfuls of quinoa.    It's all good right?  I mean I figure the rice isn't so pure , don't they remove bran and stuff when it's processed? and needs something.

I found a recipe that looked alright and proceeded to Nickytize it.   Change this, substitute that....   After I had mixed all wet and dry together I realized whoever posted the recipe was wrong.  It called for 1 cup rice flour and I ended up with soup.  So I added another cup and all seemed right.  Checking with another recipe which started with 2 cups and approximately the same amount of wet ingredients validated me.  Here is what I ended up with.

Rice Flour Muffins

2 cups homeground rice flour  you could try with store bought, but it's probably different, the quinoa may be optional.  Who knows?
1/2 cup ground oatmeal
2 tsp. baking powder
Pinch of salt
1/4 c. almonds, ground
1/4 cup honey
1 cup milk
2 eggs
2 Tblsp. melted butter
1-2 Tblsp veg. oil (sorry, I didn't exactly measure this)

Preheat oven to 400deg.  Mix wet and dry ingredients seperately, then mix them together just until combined.  Spoon into muffin tins.  Bake 20-25 min.

I was pleasantly satisfied with these muffins.  They had a texture a bit like cornbread.  Now mind, these were plain muffins which is fine with me but you may want to add a little flavor like orange zest or berries.  A little jam on top and they were quite tasty.  I was a little worried they would be too sweet but they weren't.  As for the quinoa, many people say it doesn't taste like anything, but for me, it does.  A bit like grass and raw asparagus.  Anyway the taste was slightly there but didn't bother me at all. No one else noticed it, I must be quinoa sensitive.  I would make these again even if it weren't for my husbands diet.

*Update*

I went back to this recipe to make it again and was really sure that there should be eggs in it.  Just like me to forget an ingredient.  So I put in two, thinking this was probably the right number based on other muffins.   They turned out about the same (given that I didn't make it 100% the same) So if any of you tried this and it failed, It's totally my fault, I apologize.