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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!
Table of Contents
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?
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.
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.
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!
Flourless Paleo Muffins—With Mix-Ins
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
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).
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Hello Nicole,
I am a long-time fan of your flourless recipes. This was my first time trying this one, and I can’t figure out my mistake. The muffins baked brown on top, but some of the insides kind of spilled out around the side. The sides of the muffins were very sticky. I know didn’t follow the part of the recipe that said to leave them in the baking tin for 10 min (I sometimes ignore this instruction in recipes, but maybe it was more important here!!) It’s hard to wait sometimes lol. Especially when they smell as good as these muffins…
Did you make any ingredient substitutions, Elaine? If you’ve been around here for a while, you know how specific my recipes are, and if you didn’t use a “no-stir” cashew butter, I could see your having a result like you described. Did you blend until the batter was very smooth? Use all room temperature ingredients, and not use larger eggs than called for? Bake at a higher temperature? Fill the muffin wells more than 3/4 of the way full? There are so many variables and often, as you described, people have habits in the kitchen that they think don’t matter, but often do.
I just ordered five pounds of raw cashews, so looking forward to trying this. Thank you Nicole. And I especially thank you for a flour-free recipe without chocolate! Some of us cannot eat it. And subbing every recipe with a mix of Carob and Dandy Blend to somewhat mimic chocolate gets a bit tiring after a while, at least it does for me. So I thank you for this recipe for which I only need to sub the eggs, I can’t eat them either, lol. Yes, I know it will be heavier than you make, but I’m good with that. Blessings!
Trying to source Cashew nuts that have not come already salted is a nightmare where I live, wherever I choose to purchase they are not fresh. Need to find somewhere to purchase here on the Canary Island and maybe try a few recipes and then order in BULK..Love trying new recipes. I have your Gluten Free on a Shoestring Bakes Bread book. Some of the breads seem to be such a messing around with items I sadly either do not have or cannot afford to purchase, so am trying to find a good bread that doesn´t fall apart, from the crust or doesn´t just crumble.
I would love to copy and paste your recipes into my laptop but for some reason your site won’t let me do it, unlike others that will. Is there a reason for this?
Hi, I noticed a while ago that doing this was not possible, I am assuming this is because of either copyright rules and laws, also the fact that Nicole has taken her time out to share some of them for free, and so as she has invested her time and effort maybe it is good to purchase her books, although I am only assuming this. I would love to purchase a flourless book of her recipes so am searching for this, however am wondering if the content is included in one of her other books.
Hope you receive an answer from Nicole.