Ginger Lemon Girl’s Gluten Free Vegan Dark Chocolate Muffins

• dry ingredients:
• 1/2 cup millet flour
• 1/2 cup blanched almond flour
• 1/2 cup sorghum flour
• 3 Tbsp cocoa powder
• 2 Tbsp ground flax seeds
• 1 tsp chia seeds
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp Celtic sea salt
• wet ingredients:
• 1/2 cup applesauce or pumpkin puree
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil or canola oil
• 1/3 cup agave nectar, maple syrup, or honey
• 1/4 cup almond milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• add in's
• 1/3 cup Enjoy Life Allergen Free Chocolate Chips (these are minis - which work great for muffins!)

1. Preheat oven to 180 / 350 degrees.
2. Line a 12 cup muffin tin with paper liners. (I HIGHLY recommend using paper liners for this recipe.)
3. In a large bowl whisk together all dry ingredients.
4. In your stand mixer bowl, mix together all wet ingredients.
5. Gradually add in the dry ingredients and mix together until you have a wet batter.
6. Allow the batter to rest for 5 minutes to thicken. (The chia seeds & ground flax seeds will thicken the batter and give it the texture of a "regular" muffin batter.)
7. Stir in the chocolate chips.
8. Fill the paper liners about 3/4 full of muffin batter.
9. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the a toothpick inserted in the middle of a muffin comes out with very few crumbs, or until you can gently touch the top of a muffin and it does not leave an impression.
10. Makes 12 regular muffins, or 24 mini-muffins
11. **Carrie's Notes:
12. Texture: these muffins have a very tender crumb (which is often the case with vegan muffins). If you want more of a cake like texture, feel free to add 1/2 teaspoon of xanthan gum or guar gum for a thicker muffin batter.
13. Oil: I added more oil to this recipe than I generally use for muffins. This really helps the muffins stay moist and overall it means that there is about 2 teaspoons of oil per muffin (for 12). If you don't want to use 1/2 cup of oil, decrease the amount to 1/4 cup and add an additional 1/4 cup of applesauce or pumpkin puree. The only difference may be that the muffins will not stay quite as moist by day 2 or day 3.
14. Chia Seeds & Ground Flax Seeds: These are both magical ingredients in egg free baking! Chia seeds have seriously ridiculous gelling power and help thicken up the muffin batter. Ground flax seeds have a wonderful "gelling" property as well, though it's not as potent as the chia seeds. I do recommend keeping the chia seeds in this recipe, if you don't have them another tablespoon of ground flax seeds should work just fine though.
15. Paper Liners: Because these muffins are delicate, I think it's definitely a good idea to use paper liners. If these muffins stick to the pan without a liner, they may be very hard to remove all in one piece.
16. Millet flour & Sorghum Flour: If you don't want to use these flours, feel free to exchange them for another whole grain gluten free flour such as brown rice flour, quinoa flour, or even buckwheat flour! 

For more information about this recipe check out Carrie's original blog post.
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