Baking has become a bit more difficult for me lately, as I was having some issues and had to start following a very restrictive diet. This diet is slowly coming to an end (thank god!) so I can enjoy more and more delicious things 🙂 And these muffins are one of them (or two… or twelve, haha). I was craving chocolate for months and now the time has come!

Surprisingly, these muffins contain NO SUGAR. Sugar is unfortunately the last thing I will be adding to my diet so I will still have to wait a bit. My fruit intake is also very limited so I cannot use fruit to sweeten my life a bit. But fortunately, there is a solution for that. The solution is called ERYTHRITOL which is a natural sweetener.

I don’t want this to be an article about erythritol because there are plenty of them out there, and if you wish to get detailed information, feel free to do a research. For now, I will just explain shortly: despite of the scary name, erythritol is a natural sugar alcohol. It can be naturally found in some fruits and other foods (like corn, for example). The advantage of erythritol is that it’s natural and it doesn’t affect the level of blood sugar, so it’s a suitable sweetener if you cannot eat sugar at all.

And for me, the biggest advantage is that in baking it behaves pretty much like sugar and it doesn’t leave any aftertaste. Great, isn’t it? 🙂

Can I just use sugar?

If you don’t have any dietary restrictions regarding sugar, feel free to use it. Just bear in mind that erythritol is a bit less sweet (it’s between 60% and 80% of sweetness of sugar) so if you decide to use sugar, put a bit less.

Ingredients for 12 big guys

Dry ingredients

• 70 g brown rice flour
• 60 g buckwheat flour
• 70 g ground walnuts
• 2 tea spoons of baking powder
• 120 g erythritol (or a bit less sugar)
• 50 g cocoa powder

Wet ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 80 g vegetable oil
• 320 g white yogurt
• 110 g – 120 g courgette, grated and squeezed

How to bake them (super easy)

1. Line a muffin tin with paper cups and start preheating your oven (170°C).
2. Peel a courgette, grate it and squeeze excessive water out of it. It should now have about 110 g – 120 g. The weight of the courgette before this depends on how juicy it is; I used slightly more than half of a medium sized courgette.
3. In one bowl, mix all the dry ingredients.
4. In another bowl, mix eggs, oil and yogurt and then incorporate the grated courgette.

5. Pour wet ingredients into dry ones and mix all together (just with a spoon is enough).
6. Divide the batter evenly into prepared muffin cups and place in the preheated oven.

8. Bake at 170°C cca 30 minutes (that might vary slightly depending on your oven). You can use a toothpick to see if it comes out clean.
9. Eat. Or maybe wait until they cool down a bit (that applies for all food. You don’t want to burn your tongue like somebody who is definitely not me).

Final tips

• If you want to use different flour, I think this recipe is open to experiments, so if you have a favourite gluten free mix and you want to use it, go for it. Just be careful about the amount in case it absorbs more liquid.
• Decorate them with yogurt to turn them into beautiful, healthy cupcakes! Mix white yogurt with some ground walnuts and ground chia seeds. Let it sit for a while until it thickens and you can decorate! I count with about 40 g of yogurt for a cupcake but the amount of chia seeds would be very individual because it basically depends on thickness of the yogurt you are using.

Enjoy and don’t forget to leave a comment! 🙂