Gluten Free + Grain Free Mint Chocolate Cupcakes

Surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of gluten free or grain free mint chocolate chip cupcake recipes out there! Of course, you can invent your own by creating chocolate gluten free grain free cake, then looking up a suitable “cream” recipe and just add your own peppermint extract, but it’s not quite the same.

I prefer to let someone else do the recipe testing and just follow it step by step. So I was happy to stumble upon this recipe on YouTube.

They actually use tiger nut flour. You can easily find tiger nut flour on Amazon or maybe at a Trader Joes or Wholefoods locally. It’s probably possible substitute for another type of gluten free flour if you really want to, but measurements might not parallel exactly, and you may have to experiment to get the perfect texture to your cake.

To your sugar and tiger nut flour, add two eggs and some coconut milk, then stir until your batter has an even consistency.

Did you know that tiger nuts are not actually nuts?

The coconut milk looks a little chunky here, but it’s supposed to be!

Scoop out enough batter to fill the muffin tins about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way full, depending on how big you want your muffins and how big the tin is. I prefer smaller muffins so they’re easier to eat and take less time to bake, but it also means you have to do more scooping!

This recipe is pretty small and makes just 9 muffins, so you may be alright with a larger set of smaller muffins. Set them to bake for 15-20 minutes on 300 to 350 degrees depending on your oven.

Now, the weird part! We’re going to use fresh avocado as a base for our frosting.  Cut out the avocado flesh, place in a blender, and add some coconut sugar plus coconut butter to make a gluten free, grain free, dairy free buttercream style frosting. It’s definitely not the same thing, but close enough for what we’re trying to achieve.

Yup, that’s coconut butter! Oh  yeah, don’t forget the peppermint extract.

The consistency here just looks like blended avocado, but with the added butter and sugar it definitely tastes sweet and fluffy!

Now that the muffins are done baking, it’s time to frost them. If your’e in a hurry, just grab a butter knife and start frosting them! If you have some better baking supplies around, you can grab a piping tool and do some nice swirly designs on top of the muffin cakes.

Adding a few dark chocolate chips won’t add too many calories, and will give your muffins a nice chocolatey addition to an already chocolatey treat. But of course, you can never have too much chocolate!

You can get the original recipe here including full instructions and ingredients list, or watch the video below for a live version of how to make these gluten free and grain free mint chocolate cupcakes.