Hello, hello!
How was your weekend? With temperatures in the 80s, mine was a summery few days! My outdoorsy weekend activities included a few hours relaxing at the beach, tennis workout with my hubs, long walk at the park with my pup and gardening work.
Snacking on a Zing bar & reading a travel magazine at the beach on Saturday
Indoors, I did some blog and photography work, and the hubs and I watched a movie and a few episodes of our current TV obsessions, House of Cards and Westworld. Who else is into those? We just recently started watching both, so we have a lot of episodes to keep us entertained during low-key nights for awhile!
I also got some baking and recipe creation experimenting in, including the recipe I’m sharing today: chocolate chip cherry almond muffins.
Actually, over the past week I’ve been a recipe creatin’ machine! It seems like I tend to go a week or two where I don’t come up with any new recipes – whether because I’m traveling, super busy, or just lacking ideas (oh, and also if I’m having recipe fails!) – and then all of a sudden I’m hit with recipe inspiration and come up with a bunch of new successful creations. I love that when that happens.
But anyways, let’s talk about these muffins!
In the past I’ve only used dried cherries in muffins, but I decided to give it a shot with fresh ones, and it came out great! Pitting and chopping the cherries is a little tedious, but a nice way to use up some sweet cherries that are in season (and delicious!) right now.
The muffins get their almond flavor by both almonds, which are used as part of the base with oats, as well as almond extract. That stuff is powerful! Just 1/2 TSP infuses some nice almond flavor into the muffins.
And of course, I included chocolate chips in the muffin batter. You can leave em out if you don’t like chocolate (Is that even possible?) but I’m liking the combination of chocolate + cherries + almond. Cherries & chocolate are always a good idea, and cherries & almonds work so well together, so why not combine all three? Yum.
Plus, this recipe is dairy free, gluten free, and refined sugar free – making them healthy, allergen friendly muffins to have around as a snack or dessert!
Chocolate Chip Cherry Almond Muffins {vegan + gf}
Ingredients
- 2 cups dry oats
- 1/3 cup slivered or sliced natural almonds
- 2/3 cup sweet cherries
- 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
- 1/3 cup dark chocolate chips
- 1/3 cup almond milk
- 1/2 TSP almond extract
- 1/2 TSP baking powder
- 1/4 TSP salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a muffin tin with 9 muffin cups.
- Place the oats and almonds in a food processor. Pulse until the mixture is mostly ground.
- Add in the almond milk, almond extract, salt, maple syrup and baking powder. Pulse until ingredients are combined well.
- Pit the cherries, then chop into small pieces - around 8 pieces for each cherry (It sounds tedious, but only takes a few minutes!). Add the cherries to the food processor, and also add in the dark chocolate chips. Pulse for just 5-10 seconds. The goal is to have the batter get a cherry colored hue to it, but to also have chunks of cherry and chocolate in the batter.
- Spoon the batter into the muffin cups, then cook for 14 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out of the center of the muffins clean.
- Allow to slightly cool before enjoying!
Nutrition
Tell me… What outdoorsy things have you been doing lately? What was the last kind of muffin that you made/ate?
Sounds like summer is coming early out in your parts, Nicole! I spent the weekend cleaning up and then planting the garden…I had no idea how long that would take! But it was nice to see it all planted and looking good at the end of the weekend…now I just have to keep the rabbits from mowing down all of my hard work! I love this recipe idea of using fresh cherries in the muffins. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever baked with cherries other than the classic cherry pie. I clearly need to expand my boundaries a bit! These muffins sound amazing, and I would definitely be all over ’em! Love the oats in there, too!
Ah yes, gardening can be a lot of work… but it’s great when you can reap the rewards of your labor later on!
These are seriously making me drool! I can’t find fresh cherries that are organic here to save my life, better yet ones that are locally grown. That’s definitely what I miss most about Cali!
Ah yes, I’m spoiled here with the Cali produce! I certainly take full advantage of it 🙂
I like how you used regular cherries for these muffins. I just bought cherries!
You should make these muffins with your cherries! 😉
You’re just watching House of Cards?! Are you dying right now??? I can’t wait for the new season – comes out 5/30!
Love this muffin idea. Apparently I need all the cherries in the world… they’re anti-inflammatories!
Yesss I’m in the 2nd season, and can’t get over the fact that he killed Zoe!! OMG, I literally screamed when he threw her in front of that train… yes, I’m sure you’ve heard of the whole tart cherry juice post-workout theory to reduce inflammation? I’ve never really tested that theory out though..