Gluten Free Mixed Berry Muffins

Our 14 year old has home economics classes in high school.  She's still pretty close to me even though she only lives with us 2 nights of a fortnight.   She's doing a bit of cooking lessons at school and the next challenge is muffins.  Well, that's simple enough, only that her partner in the task is allergic to gluten.

And  Bianca said the gluten free stuff her friend brought to school have been dreadful, dry, tasteless.  I told her it might have been the flour.  I have done a bit of research in gluten free food, but haven't done too much in baking because although it's not the best for Luke to have gluten, it's not life threatenning.  Gluten free foods are the ones I have been wanting to do, but haven't got to.

My old boss who was a keen cook and baker, has been suffering from celiac since birth.  She brought gorgeous home baked cookies and muffins and of course, gluten free, for our morning teas.  She told us not to use the commerical gluten free flour.  Just use the normal flours you'd normally use she said, there are a lot of natural flours gluten free, rice, potato, wheat free corn starsh...  She said, well, 2 parts rice flour, and 1 part potato flour, or simply tapioca flour which is so available in most Asian grocery shops, that will replace most of the plain flours in cake recipes.

So I told Bianca, let's road test, bring some muffins to her friend and if it's better than what she had, they can use it in cooking classes.  After all, dry muffins won't get them good scores.

I dug out my Cake and Slices book, and found a Cranberry Muffin recipe as a base.  We don't have frozen or fresh cranberries, so we used frozen mixed berries.

Glueten Free Mixed Berry Muffins

1 Egg
100ml milk
75g unsalted butter, softened.
100g rice flour
50g tapioca flour
100g castor sugar
3 teaspoon baking powder (Ward's Baking Powder is gluten free)
75g frozen berries, party defrosted.

Topping:
2 tablespoon of castor sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon powder

Method:
Put the egg and milk in a bowl.  Whisk together and beat in the softened butter.
Sift through the flour mixture and baking powder (it's important to sift together both the flours and baking powder so it's an even mix) and mix it together with sugar till smooth.
Gently fold in the berries.
Grease muffin tins - I used cup cake cases to save time - spoon mixtures in until three quarters full.
Mix the topping mixture well and spinkle on top of the muffins, bake in pre-heated oven 180C for 20 minutes or until skewers come out clean.

Bianca said it was a much nicer gluten free cake!