Tahini Muffins

Guilty! I am guilty of having a huge sweet tooth, so needless to say I really enjoy baking!

One of my “New Year’s” resolutions was to enhance my skills as a baker. Okay, it’s a stretch calling myself a baker but maybe one day haha. I wanted to learn and find different techniques within baking. So I did some research, looked up recipes, compared them, and mixed and matched them. Needless to say, I found some amazing recipes! I have to give credit to those who are recipe developers, bakers, chefs, and other related food scientists. It’s an incredibly difficult job and an amazing skill to have! So thank you!

While doing my research I found a lot of vegan and paleo recipes that utilized tahini.  Now I am not on any specific “diet” besides being gluten-free (due to health reasons) but I wanted to try to make something that could potentially fit different nutrition preferences.

Since being a bikini competitor, I found substitutes or alternatives for “oils and butter” during competition prep. For example, using applesauce instead of oil or using yogurt instead of sour cream. I’ve used some interesting alternatives in the past prior to prep and it's nice to change it up sometimes.

I found a few recipes that combined both tahini and applesauce! So I decided to do some mixing and matching. I had a hard time deciding whether or not to make a loaf or muffins, but I ended up going with muffins!

For the most part, this recipe can be made vegan, paleo, and gluten-free. I added some ingredients to the original recipes I looked at which would not make them vegan or paleo. But if you can modify it if needed.

This blog is about sharing and inspiring others to try something new. I hope you can take this recipe and make it your own! Whether you keep it the same, add, take away, whatever it is own it!

Ingredients

• 1 cup almond flour

• ½ tsp baking soda

• 1 tsp of cinnamon

• ½ cup tahini

• ½ cup applesauce

• 1 egg

• ¼ cup maple syrup or agave

• 1 cup fruit of choice (I used strawberries - that’s all I had)

• ⅛ cup honey

• Protein powder (which I forgot to add in when I made them, oh well haha)

• Cinnamon sugar (topping)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. Combine all ingredients and blend well

3. Fill cupcake trays (fill up trays 2/3)

4. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top before baking

5. Bake for about 25 mins  

6. Let cool and drizzle extra honey on top

7. Enjoy!

These muffins turned out pretty damn good! Being the first time I had used tahini in a sweet dish, I was pretty happy with how they turned out. They weren’t overly sweet and they had a hit of savoriness to them.

I definitely want to try these with other fruits like blueberries, bananas, or pineapple. I would like to try them with almond, peanut, or some other nut butter instead of the tahini.

But overall these are worth trying!

I did end up tracking the macros for all my macro-conscious friends out there!

Macronutrients per Muffin

• Total calories: 180

• Protein: 6.25g

• Carbs: 11.9g

• Fats: 11.5g