Gluten Free Caramel Apple Pie Muffins

I got 40lbs of honeycrisp apples a couple of weeks ago with my bountiful basket. Now I love these apples, but even little old me with her huge appetite hasn't been able to finish them all off yet. (I eat one if not two per day, easily!) I wanted to get creative and make some healthy muffins using the apples before they go bad. When I was at the store on Saturday, there was a special display with caramels that caught my eye. Caramel apple anything sounded just incredible! So I found a recipe on Pinterest that sounded perfect, modified it to make it a little bit healthier, and added a little surprise in the middle :-).

To make them healthier, I substituted applesauce and 3 tea coconut oil for the regular "oil" that the recipe called for, used two egg whites and one egg instead of two eggs, and substituted half of the sugar with Stevia in the Raw. I also added 3 tbsp of ground flax seed for some omega-3 fatty acids. The only ingredient that may not be GF is the caramels. It didn't say on the bag whether they were or not, so I just assume they're not. I cut those in half, too, so there would only be a little bit of sinful treat in the middle :-).

Here is what you'll need:

3/4 cup oat flour

1/2 cup GF all-purpose flour

1/4 cup brown rice flour

1/2 cup gluten free oats

1/4 cup turbinado sugar

8 pkts of Stevia in the Raw

3 TBSP ground flax seed

2 tea baking powder

2/3 cup of almond milk

1/2 cup applesauce

3 tea coconut oil

2 egg whites + 1 egg lightly beaten

1 tea vanilla extract

1/2 tea salt

Cinnamon to taste (I added about 1.5 tablespoons)

2 cups of diced apple (1/4 inch cubes)

6 pieces of caramel (gluten free if that's a concern for you) cut in half

Here how you make 'em:

Preheat your oven to 400F.

In a large bowl or your bowl for your standing mixer, add the flour, oats, flax seed, sugar, stevia, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Mix dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl, combine the rest of the ingredients, minus the apple. Make a well in the dry ingredients, pour in the wet ingredients, and mix until uniform. Add the apples, and fold them in evenly.

Line a muffin pan with muffin cups, and spray with non-stick spray (I used coconut oil spray.) Fill them up halfway with batter, and set the caramel pieces in the middle of each cup like this:

Then fill the cups up the rest of the way, throw them in the oven, and bake for 15 minutes until done!

These are great as an on-the-go breakfast or a quick snack. They taste just like apple pie with caramel drizzled on top! I hope you guys are able to try this recipe and like it! Let me know in the comments below if you do!

Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a great week! I'll be back soon with a post on some OOTD and EOTD pics that I've collected from the past few weeks.

Happy Trails!

Stacey

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