I was craving lemon poppyseed muffins. I am not sure why, but it happened. And so my desire to bake a new thing began as it always does – by searching online for a basic muffin I could re-invent. To my shock and dismay, I couldn’t find a lemon poppyseed muffin that was both gluten-free and dairy-free. I found gluten-free versions but they contained things like butter cream or milk. I found dairy-free and vegan muffins but they often had all purpose flour.
Isn’t a lemon poppyseed muffin the first thing people strive to bake the day they decide it’s time to cut the potentially inflammatory action of gluten and processed dairy? No? Okay, fair enough. Well maybe it should be.
Since I couldn’t find a base to work from, I pulled out my own book, The UnDiet Cookbook. The book is completely gluten and dairy-free and given that the recipes are well tested, I often end up using them as a base in which to dive off in a new direction. There are two excellent muffin recipes in the book – the Banana Berry Oatmazing Muffin and the Coconut Apple Muffin Lovin’.
The next step for me to is to switch and swap some of the dry ingredients and some of the wet ones based on what I want to add or remove to make it all new again.
There are two popular ways to flavour things lemony, in addition to using real lemon juice and zest.
- Lemon extract: ensure it is the cold pressed lemon oil + alcohol and nothing else. No natural flavours, colourings etc. Just the good stuff.
- Lemon essential oil: ensure beyond a shadow of a doubt that your oils are truly pure before you inhale or ingest!
I don’t have a lot of extracts around my kitchen aside from vanilla, but I do have an abundance of essential oils, and so that was what I used in both the muffin base and the frosting. I will only use oils from Living Libations (more on that here).
The process of creating the recipe was pretty quick and easy, but I still wasn’t confident it was going to work. For me, baking is one part chemistry (which I never studied) and 8 parts magic. What I do have on my side is that I never actually learned how to bake with ingredients like sugar, milk or all purpose flour. Over the years of experimenting and creating I have come to know the different types of gluten-free flours that work for different things.
One of my newfound super fave flours to bake with is chickpea flour. It’s fairly neutral tasting, is rather light and offers a little outside crunch on things like muffins that is just so good.
Once these lemon poppyseed muffins came out of the oven and it was clear that I had a raging success on my hands, there was only one thing to do: come up with a seriously incredible frosting.
Frosting takes a muffin into cupcake territory!
You can quote me on that!
And that is just what I did. I used one of my favourite frosting ingredients – coconut butter (different from coconut oil!), some more lemon essential oil and a little maple syrup and water. Perfection!
I am now thinking that with this newfound awesome muffin base and frosting recipe, you can pretty much create any type of muffin/cupcake you desire! Vanilla? Use vanilla extract or vanilla essential oil. Almond? Almond extract with some chopped almonds on top. Coffee cake? Well, you know where I’m going with this.
For now though, I think this gluten-free and dairy-free vegan lemon poppyseed muffin has stolen my heart.
We had to freeze most of them – they were going very quickly in our house. Enjoy!
Lemon Poppyseed Muffins (gluten-free, dairy-free)
- Total Time: 45 mins
- Yield: 12 muffins 1x
Description
A moist and delicious gluten-free, dairy-free lemon poppyseed muffin with lemon cream frosting.
Ingredients
- Dry Ingredients
- 3/4 cup all purpose gluten-free flour (Bob’s Redmill)
- 1/2 cup brown rice flour
- 1/2 cup chickpea flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
- Wet Ingredients
- 1/3 cup apple sauce
- 2/3 cup maple syrup or honey
- 1/3 cup water
- 1/4 cup coconut oil
- 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice (about 1 lemon’s worth)
- 10 drops lemon essential oil or 2 tsp lemon extract
- Add Ins
- 1 serving chia paste or 1 egg
- 1 Tbsp lemon zest
- 1 Tbsp poppyseeds
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F and line your muffin tin with unbleached liners.
- Mix dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl.
- In a separate mixing bowl, food processor or blender, combine all wet ingredients.The lemon oil may foam up a little with the coconut oil. It’s okay!
- Once thoroughly mixed, add the wet ingredients into the dry and stir in the chia paste/egg, lemon zest and poppyseeds. Mix with a spatula until well mixed. It will bubble a little.
- Dollop your mix into the muffin tray and place in the middle of the oven. Bake for 25-30 mins. The top will brown slightly and a tooth pick will come out clean.
- Allow to cool before adding the optional frosting.
- Prep Time: 15 mins
- Cook Time: 30 mins
- Category: Dessert, Baking
Dairy-Free Lemon Cream Frosting
- Total Time: 10 mins
- Yield: 1/2 cup 1x
Description
A rich and creamy lemon cream frosting recipe without processed sugar or milk ingredients
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup coconut butter
- 1/4 cup water
- 1–2 Tbsp maple syrup (taste to determine your preferred sweetness level)
- 7 drops lemon essential oil or 1-2 tsp lemon extract (again, taste for preference)
Instructions
- In your food processor or small container of your high speed blender, process all ingredients together until smooth and creamy. Note that the mix will harden slightly once it cools.
- Once muffins are cool, using a small spatula or butter knife, dollop and smear frosting onto each muffin.
- Prep Time: 10 mins
- Category: Dessert
22 responses to “Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free Lemon Poppyseed Muffins”
ahh guilt free lemon poppyseed muffins, yum! thanks for this! I’m lactose intolerant and have to be extremely careful with baked goods and sweets so this should help me plenty! xo
Just wondering if you melt the coconut oil before adding. Thanks.
I didn’t. You can if you like but I typically just put it all in the blender and it works fine.
Meghan,
Have you ever used Cup4Cup gf flour? I have been using it for several years & I love it! I use it for everything from baking to gravy. It’s a straight sub in any recipe
I’d never heard of this and today you’re the second to mention it. I’m sure it would be great. My baking recipes are all very flexible.
Could you make them without the lemon essential oil or lemon extract? would they just not be as “lemony”?
That would be my guess. If you do it, let me know how it goes. It’s hard to answer questions accurately on recipe changes that I have never done.
Meghan, I know you’re super busy now but any chance you could tweet the properties of your favorite flours? I loved what you sent concerning the oils. I stopped baking because trial and error gets expensive. THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU DO!!!
Hi Linda! I go through the various gluten-free flours in this online course. I’m not sure tweeting all that info is doable. Not sure what you’re referring to with the oils but I’m sure if you google a gluten-free flour guide you may find what you’re looking for.
Hi Meghan,
Would using only the Red Bob Mills’ gf flour for the entire flour component work?
I didn’t test it that way but it just might! Let me know if it turns out.
[…] cake just yet – the high fiber and protein would make the cake mighty dense, but it is excellent in muffins, cookies, gluten-free pizza crust and, well, these […]
These are amazing!
Hi Meghan, in place of the chick pea flour can i use coconut, almond or oat flour? i just find that chickpea has an after taste.. thanks!
My 10yo daughter and I are making this recipe right now. I thought I’d let you know it would be nice to add the chia paste recipe and to note as the first direction to prepare it and let it rest. My daughter was bummed to have to wait for the chia paste when we were so close to putting breakfast in the oven! :0)
I am intolerant to beans, would the flour effect me the same way the beans do?
It might! Bean flours are more refined and broken down, so depending on the intolerance some people find the flours OK. However, you can easily substitute another flour for the chickpea flour.
Just wondering about the potato starch in the r
These muffins are AMAZING! I substituted buckwheat flour for the chickpea (tastes metallic to me), and the recipe still worked out great. Thanks Meghan!
Amazing!
Abt the lemon poppyseed muffins, what home assembled GF flour could I use? Say a combo of almond flour and ?? Sane quantity? More? Less? Thx.
You could play around by making your own mix using other gluten-free flours such as brown rice flour, sorghum flour, millet flour, almond flour, buckwheat flour. Pick three and use 1/4 cup of each to make 3/4 cup. You could also add in a Tbsp or two of arrowroot flour to the mix.