Remembering what I said in the previous muffins (the apple ones without eggs, remember?), the “good the first time” worked great this time: the much-feared-yes-so-feared gluten-free muffins turned out well on the very first try! Yes yes yes!!

Are you surprised by my enthusiasm? Hey, enthusiasm is needed here, these are my first gluten-free muffins! We have to celebrate!
They’re also lactose-free (meaning without milk and derivatives), but with that “without” I was a bit faster and figured it out earlier, already at the time of the lemon ring cake which is one of the cornerstones of cakes in my house. And I might even think about making it gluten-free at this point. 😛

And they are also salt-free…
Heh heh heh, well okay… of course, you’ll say, it’s a dessert!
Ehhhh, yes! Of course, it’s a dessert, but trust me, I see quite a bit of pinches here and there, when not actual splashes, of salt even in sweets!… Okay, this salt-free thing is a joke 😉 although it’s undeniable that it’s true, but it’s a topic that matters to me, as you can imagine as you’re inside this blog.

If you remember, I already talked to you about the hidden salt issue in packaged sweets in the filled cookies recipe, so I won’t bore you with a repetition. I’ll just tell you that it’s true that this is indeed a whole different matter compared to the mere pinch that everyone but me ( 😃) uses in homemade sweets, where the pinch should serve to enhance the flavors. But it’s also true that you can easily do without it, and without suffering, believe me. And so, since I don’t have salt at home, well… in these gluten-free muffins no pinch of salt, beyond habits, or decisions, or lifestyles.
In fact, after this gluten-free experience, I’d say I can declare that going without a pinch of salt works well in this category too!

Okay, now that I’ve convinced you not to use salt 😀 I’ll tell you how someone convinced me to try a gluten-free recipe. 😊

All thanks to Leti, from the blog Without is good, and her contest The Free Food Lover.
Leti suggested I participate and sparked my curiosity. Then she encouraged it by inviting me to participate also in the GlutenFreeExpo, which I attended a couple of Sundays ago and mentioned in the latest newsletter (and you haven’t subscribed yet??? subscribe!!!), besides on the fb page when I showed you the photo I took, very excited, with Sonia Peronaci. Lovely things, as someone would say (🤩).

At the GlutenFreeExpo I wandered around the stands looking like a perfect newbie for a couple of hours. Toward the end of the afternoon, I started to understand something and stopped at a stand to get explanations about the flours to use for a dessert. My question was slightly interested… but I’d say I did well. 😀
I have to say that even before this useful and productive day, I had stocked my pantry with rice flour, corn starch, potato starch, buckwheat flour, and various types of corn flour. The latter with the precise intent of reworking the polenta cake I made last year, a dessert which when I spoke about it in the newsletter I referred to as “unconsciously gluten-free”.
Because it’s true, it’s exactly like that: there are recipes that are gluten-free by default, but we gluten-free novices don’t worry about whether they are because in our daily life it doesn’t matter to us.
However, then it might happen that the curiosity to cook not only “unaware” recipes but also “aware” gluten-free recipes arises.
At first, the idea of tackling a gluten-free dessert scared me. I was plagued by doubts like “it won’t rise,” “it won’t be soft,” “it will be gritty”… Legitimate doubts, eh, since the few experiments I had done in the past with rice flour had left me with the memory of a gritty taste and no desire to try again.
But in the end, it’s true that a good time comes for everything, things can go wrong for ages and then suddenly resolve in an instant. And that’s how I discovered in an instant that there are fine-milled gluten-free flours specific for sweets, which make desserts softer, and therefore more enjoyable to eat, compared to those from my past failed experiments. And I understood, to give an example, that a finely milled corn flour specifically for use in sweets works better than the corn flour usually used for preparing polenta. And now, go ahead and tell me that was a no-brainer to think of, say it without hesitation… because I, on the other hand, hadn’t thought of it!

So, now that you’re exhausted after reading all these introductory explanations… sit at my table, as I know you’re drooling! Please, take one of these gluten-free muffins with clementine cream! 😋

They are gluten-free muffins with a simple taste, a taste of home, a taste of homemade ring cake, and they are super good for breakfast. Dunk them in your coffee, you’ll taste such goodness!