dark chocolate prune muffins (vegan and wheat free)

Boy, did this post give me a headache. I sieved it repeatedly, hoping to filter out the acrimony and distil its essence into six short paragraphs. Didn't work. Headache notwithstanding, I'm ecstatic, in the wild eyed way only another obsessed foodie could be, or would understand. I didn't make a better wheel, or frying pan. I did hit pay dirt in my happy quest to bring you easy, delicious, healthier and accessible recipes that nourish body and soul, respect your wallet and trouble the conscience a little less, while continuing to showcase the foods I grew up eating and still love. At least, it started out happy.

I want to help you eat well, without discounting nutrition, pleasure or comfort, while avoiding the kind of culinary elitism and politicism and gratuitous foodie glamour that I keep painfully colliding into, when searching for viable alternatives to mainstream diets.

More than a few people out there, seem bent on convincing us that without what they don't seem to realise are rare, unwieldy, and very often expensive ingredients to many of us, we can't eat well, healthier or more conscionably. It's easy to think, if you believe everything you read, that animal rights activists, vegans, vegetarians, gluten abstainees and the well fed are all wealthy enough to not only afford the select and rarefied ingredients they allow into their unsullied digestive systems, but to probably also pay someone to trudge up hill, down dale, and  twice around the organic mulberry bush, to procure them.

The simple, beautiful truth is that healthier, conscionable, more inclusive cooking and shredded bank accounts or annoyingly poncy ingredients are not joined at the hip, and I am intensely, ridiculously gratified to tell you this is the only time you will see here, terms like "cold pressed", "organic", "grass fed", "fleur de sel" or "avocado oil" and their ilk. Am I giving you too much credit if I think you're perfectly capable of deciding whether you want your coffee organic or affordable, without my blatant specification in my recipe? I'm all for kinder animal husbandry, wholesome ingredients, culinary diversity, fair trade, community supported agriculture and local, seasonal produce but I have more immediate, pressing issues to contend with, like procurement challenges, a near total absence of local produce, five mouths to feed daily and a wallet that's sadly not bottomless. My choice then is to personally avoid eating cheaper, sad cows, instead of paying more than I can sustainably afford for grass fed, though my family often eats beef. My point is everyone's entitled to live by their convictions; no one has any right to impose guilt on those who don't subscribe to the same, however noble those convictions.
                    

I need to eat, I want to eat and live, harming as few and helping as many as my circumstances allow. If it's not too much to ask, I'd like to open a magazine or click on a link without being zealously pummelled on the head with the notion that I'm villainously unfeeling because I didn't bother to ensure the slice of steak on my fork was grass fed, the chicken on my plate had more than an A4 sheet sized patch to scratch around in and peck at, before it ended up on my plate, the lettuce in my salad bowl came from the farmer in the dell, three doors left, down the road, and the coffee in my cup is fair trade. These are well intentioned articles about worthy undertakings, but they  leave me cold because they largely ignore individual circumstance. Had the writers taken time to thoroughly research the politics and logistics of our food, or, how it eventually gets on all of our plates, on a global level, they might be surprised to learn of the challenging diversity of situations and often, far less than ideal circumstances around which many, many people form and manage their diets.

Just so you know how sick I am of being preached to for failing to eat local, or choose free range, or lacking the sensitivity to hear the anguished cry of the bay bush I just brutalised by plucking off three leaves for my sayur lodeh, I will very uncharacteristically banish any comment that even remotely reeks of a sermon. I will not be preached to, on my own blog and today, I am just itching to hit "delete".  All questions about the recipe however, will be very happily entertained. Now that my liver is no longer engorged with bile, I can tell you why I still have reason to be ecstatic.

I made a muffin. A proudly pedestrian muffin, with cheap, plebian ingredients, all from the supermarket across the street where I live. A delicious, soft, moist, yielding muffin, with a depth of flavour that completely seduced and overpowered every prejudice and qualm I have ever had about wheat free baking. It squelched damply, when I tore off a chunk, and I almost keeled over from muffin lust. It tasted the way the love child of a Leonidas truffle and an Agen prune might taste, if the gods of deliciousness were smiling down upon it, at the moment of conception. I was almost too overcome to take pictures.

And that ingredient list makes me feel like a proud mama. Not a nasty thing on it. Every component, innocent as a new born babe. Hush now! Chocolate is incapable of  evil. We shall talk no more of it. This muffin is for the vegan, the omnivore and everyone in between (my next book title - hands off!), the lactose challenged, the wheat traumatised, the anaemic, the chocoholic, the budget dependant, the muffin maniac, the hedonist, the health seeker and the hedonistic health seeker. An egalitarian among muffins. I'm nominating it for the Nobel Peace Prize, and I'm only half kidding.

Now that I've come down a bit from cloud nine, I need to tell you something important. These wheat free muffins may still be unsuitable for those with severe gluten intolerance. Pure, unadulterated oat grains are free from gliadin, the most distressing component of gluten for those who have intolerance issues. However, most oat products sold today are contaminated either from proximity to gluten rich grains while growing in the fields, or from being processed by machinery that also processes gluten rich grains like wheat, barley, and rye. To ensure your oat products are truly gluten free buy those that are certified. But, as even certified gluten free oats can significantly trouble a small percentage of gluten intolerant individuals, if you have such issues, you need to decide if this recipe will be suitable for you. I've refrained from pronouncing it "gluten free" for the reasons above.

I hope at least some of you will try these, because they are to me, a wonder and a triumph. If like me, you thought it was impossible to bake a tender, moist and delicious wheat free treat that didn't taste grassy, astringent or strident (I've had a few spectacular failures here) from pungent tasting alternative flours and sugars, not blowing my trumpet here but, you need to try this!

The batter smells wonderful; I couldn't stop nibbling at it. Next time I might make raw truffles from it, because with this recipe, "next times" are inevitable. You old hands at gluten free baking, or raw food diets, are probably sniggering at my naivety, but I'll tell you right now, all those times I saw wheat free or raw dessert and baking recipes, I thought, "no way can those taste good!" Well, I ate my words, they were delicious, and I wanted more, but surprise, surprise! Two of them, at eight in the morning, with a cup of black coffee, kept my mind off food way past lunch and well into tea time.

These muffins may not have come hither looks, or the power to make you break your diet, but that's  a moot point, as even 3 of them in succession, will do your soul, your hips and your heart more good than evil. So get your mixing bowl, make and eat them with pleasure then sleep the sleep of the innocent and dream their sweet, untainted chocolate dreams. Hush now! Chocolate is incapable of evil, remember? If in your happy dream, a goblin pops up and tells you three bees got too close and were crushed in the making of your palm sugar, keep calm and carry on, knowing those bees died a happy and delicious death.

dark chocolate prune muffins (vegan and wheat free)

Prep 15 mins                Cook 25 mins               Makes 10 muffins


100 g (1 cup) oat flour
50 g (1/2 cup) flax seed flour
50 g (1/2 cup) soy flour
50 g (1/3 cup) finely grated palm sugar/gula Melaka/jaggery (or molasses sugar or dark brown sugar)
2 tsp cream of tartar, sieved if lumpy
1 tsp baking soda, sieved if lumpy
½ tsp salt
150 g (1 cup) pitted prunes, sliced
150 g (slightly rounded cup) dark semi sweet mini chocolate chips
200 ml (1 cup) low fat unsweetened soy, rice or almond milk (coconut milk is too heavy)
50 ml (1/4 cup) light vegetable oil (sunflower, grapeseed, or canola)
3 tbsp dark molasses (preferably blackstrap molasses)
2 tsp vanilla extract



Preheat oven at 190 C (375 F) and line a muffin tray with 10 muffin paper cases.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flours, sugar, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt and mix thoroughly with a whisk. Sifting is recommended for these heavier flours, but not necessary. Add prunes and chocolate  chips and toss until prune slices are thoroughly coated and separate from each other.

Pour in the milk, oil, molasses and vanilla into the flour mixture and mix quickly and lightly with a large spoon, pulling the dry ingredients into the wet and stopping as soon as you have a well mixed batter. Do not mix beyond this or the muffins will be heavy.

Put a generous ice cream scoop of batter into each muffin case and bake for 25 minutes or until a fine skewer comes out clean from centre of each muffin. Check with skewer after 20 minutes. If muffins darken too quickly, reduce temperature to 180 C (350 F) after the first 15 minutes of  baking.

Remove from oven and cool muffins on a rack. Serve warm with coffee, tea or cold milk. If you're anaemic, have them with a glass of orange juice to improve iron absorption.

click here for printable recipe