Flourless Paleo Muffins—With Mix-Ins

By Nicole Hunn | Published: May 9, 2016 | Posted In: Breakfast & Brunch, Cakes, Desserts, Flourless Baking, Muffins, Paleo

5 from 6 votes

Prep Time : 15

Cook Time : 20

Moist, tender flourless Paleo muffins made with cashews, applesauce, eggs & honey. Add your favorite mix-ins, like blueberries or chips!

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Moist and tender Paleo muffins made completely flourless with cashews, applesauce, eggs and honey. Add your favorite mix-ins, like blueberries or chocolate chips!

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If you love flourless recipes like I do, you're really going to get into these flourless Paleo muffins with mix-ins. Unlike most flourless muffins, they don't have a strong background flavor, like chocolate or peanut butter (or both!). I adore peanut butter, chocolate too. And they're lovely together, of course.

But the flavor of any mix-ins you might like to add alongside chocolate and peanut butter will get lost in all that competition for your taste buds. And these happen to be Paleo, too—something peanut butter could never be. Do those distinctions even matter any more, though?

A close up of a muffin with blueberries on a white plate

One of the most important innovations of this particular flourless muffin, though, is that you can add blueberries to them. Cashews are the tree nut with a close-to-neutral flavor, so baking with cashew butter is kind of dreamy.

Cashew butter is just so expensive to buy, though, so I include instructions below for making your own in a blender or food processor. I buy raw cashew pieces at Trader Joe's, since there's no sense spending extra cash on whole cashews just to blend them.

Muffin batter being scooped into muffin top, muffin batter with blueberries in muffin tin, and close up of muffins with blueberries on a gray towel

Are you wondering whether these can be made with peanut butter or almond butter anyway? Well most of my exhaustive recipe testing for this muffin was done with peanut butter ($), some of it with almond butter ($$), and only the last with cashew butter ($$$).

And yes, the recipe works perfectly well with all of those smooth nut butters. I don't recommend putting blueberries in the peanut butter muffins, though. For flavor's sake. Or really almond butter, for that matter.

A close up of a paleo muffin with blueberries on white plate

Make them ahead, and these naturally gluten free muffins make a weekday breakfast of champions. They also make a protein-packed, low sugar after school snack. I'm in love with them, and so are my children!

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Flourless Paleo Muffins—With Mix-Ins

Moist, tender flourless Paleo muffins made with cashews, applesauce, eggs & honey. Add your favorite mix-ins, like blueberries or chips!

Course: Muffins

Cuisine: American

Prep Time: 15

Cook Time: 20

Yield: 9 muffins

Author: Nicole Hunn

Equipment

Blender

Ingredients

1 cup (256 g) smooth cashew butter (See Recipe Notes)
⅔ cup (163 g) smooth applesauce at room temperature
2 (100 g (weighed out of shell)) eggs at room temperature
¼ cup (84 g) honey
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ cup mix-ins of your choice (fresh blueberries chocolate chips, chopped nuts) (optional)

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 325°F. Line 9 wells of a standard 12-cup muffin tin and set the tin aside.
Place all of the ingredients, in the order listed, in a blender or food processor and blend or process until smooth. The batter will be relatively thin.
Fill the prepared wells of the muffin tin about 3/4 of the way full with the batter, and scatter a few of your chosen mix-ins in each well.
Press the mix-ins down a bit into the batter.
Place in the center of the preheated oven and bake until the top springs back when pressed gently and the muffins are very lightly golden brown, about 20 minutes.
Remove from the oven and allow the muffins to cool in the baking tin for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely before serving.
The muffin liners will peel off easily once the muffins are cool.
Store in a sealed container at room temperature, or seal tightly and freeze for longer storage.

Notes

How to make your own cashew butter.

I usually make my own cashew butter since it is so expensive to buy.
Simply place about 1/2 pound (8 ounces) raw cashew pieces (you can use whole cashews, but they’re much more expensive) in a high-speed blender or food processor, along with 1 tablespoon virgin coconut oil or nonhydrogenated vegetable shortening and blend or process until smooth (about 5 to 6 minutes).