Experimenting with alternative flours is extremely exciting for me. My recent time spent with Chestnut Flour has been no exception. It bakes up extremely light and fluffy, has a nice nutty slightly sweet flavor and tastes phenomenal with warm spices. Its baked goods have a light brown color, but yet do not have that heavy “whole grain” taste that we often associate with darker flours.
I found that this awesome flour worked great in graham crackers and most recently to make fluffy pancakes. I wanted to take things a step further and see how it would behave being used as a singular flour and without the eggs. These cupcakes are the happy result of this experimentation. Just by looking at the beautiful crumb structure, I’m sure you will agree that Chestnut flour is a superstar.
Different varieties of sugar create different levels of moisture! Cake and Muffin recipes tend to be pretty flexible and forgiving when it comes to this range. I call for granulated sugar in this recipe. I feel confident that you should be able to get away with subbing in whichever variety works best for you- be it organic cane, Sucanat, Palm Sugar, Xylitol and on. Just stick with a granulated variety for best results.
Chestnut flour flour can be a bit tricky to find- though I have seen it popping up all over the place in my area lately. I recommend ordering some online- there are a number of great companies that carry it!
Carrot Cake Cupcakes
1/4 Cup Applesauce
1/2 Cup Milk (any variety)
1/4 Cup Oil or Melted Butter (any mild flavored variety)
1 Tsp. Vanilla Extract
1 1/4 Cup Chestnut Flour
1 Tbs Cinnamon
3/4 Cup Granulated Sugar (*see note above)
2 Tsp Baking Powder (I like to use Double Acting)
pinch of salt
1 Cup Grated Carrots
1/2 Cup Raisins (optional)
1/2 Cups Chopped Walnuts (optional)
1 Tsp Apple Cider Vinegar (Or lemon/lime juice)
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees and line a muffin tray with 10-12 liners.
- Combine wet ingredients in a large bowl. Stir in the dry- and stir until the batter comes together. Mixing in the Vinegar last.
- Quickly pour the batter into the cups and place into the oven and bake 30 minutes. (Cupcakes will be finished when toothpick comes out clean.)
Notes: The raisins and walnuts can be left out! If you choose to leave out the raisins you may want to consider increasing the sugar in the batter to 1 full cup. (Depending how sweet you like your carrot cake!). If you leave out these ingredients you will only need 10 liners.
For the frosting I used my Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting (its totally Soy/Dairy/Nut Free!). This recipe can be found in the frosting section of both of my new cookbooks The Essential Gluten Free Baking Guides Part 1 & Part 2.
And Speaking of my Books! As part of Celiac Awareness Month Wellesse a fantastic certified gluten free vitamin company is giving away several signed copies of my books this month on their Facebook Page! (as well as a number of other great gifts!) Stop over for a chance to win!
xo,
Brittany
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
Beautiful as always! I can’t wait for the day when I can eat (GF) flours again…
Thanks sweet friend. You know I feel ya..
These look amazing! I’ve yet to really find a grain-free, egg-free muffin recipe that doesn’t sink in the middle when it cools. Bravo to you for doing it!
Now, to find chestnut flour….
The flour did all the work for me this time honestly!
Never thought to use chestnut flour for baking. I’ve seen it in homemade pasta recipes but this is genius!
I have a really dumb question…How do you grate the carrots?? With a hand grater? In the food processor?
Every time I “grate” carrots for anything remotely like this, my product turns out all hairy looking with orange carrot “hair” sticking out all over. Not very pleasing to the eye, as you can imagine.
Haha! that was a funny description. I have a cuisinart 14 cup food processor that I let do all my grating. But a hand grater should work just fine as well!
This recipe did not work for me. I substituted Almond flour for the Chestnut flour. That was the only difference. I will look for Chestnut flour for next time. Do you have any sugestions for using the Almond flour? These cupcakes look really good.
Almond flour works nothing like chestnut.. Which is why your alteration did not work. Chestnut is much starchier than almond and contains far less fat- it behaves more like a grain based flour. So your change to the recipe was a big one.
If you are looking for a almond based recipe I recommend checking out my grain and egg free chocolate cupcake recipe.
Hi Brittney, Though they look delicious I am not sure how these would rise as there are no eggs in your recipe. We tried the recipe last night just in case I was wrong. They came out totally flat and wet. Could you possibly be missing the eggs in your ingredient list? Please tell me what we did wrong if not…Fondly, Tina Turbin
Brittney,
Where do you get chestnut flour or do you make homemade? If so – where are there good instructions on how to do so:) THANKS! Love your blog,
Dana
I buy my chestnut flour from Nuts.com – its a good price there and their shipping is awesome! (super fast)
These cupcakes were absolutely fantastic. I don’t eat grains, and I have an egg allergy so I figured carrot cake was something I would not be able to eat again. I was wrong. Wow, these really were amazing. Thanks so much for posting this.
Chestnut flour is so good isn’t it??
I plan to use it in a lot of recipes this fall!
Hi, these look fantastic and I’d love to make them for my Mum who’s wheat, gluten and dairy intolerable. Only problem is I’m not a very percipient baker and I’m not sure what your cup measurements would be? Sorry to sound very stupid!
B
This website might help you do the conversions.. http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/convert/measurements.html
Not sure what happened there, I of course meant ‘proficient’ baker
Could i use rice flour? I couldn’t find any chestnut flour
Order some chestnut flour from
Nuts.com. You won’t regret it.
I have found that I am now intolerant/allergic to almonds. This greatly upsets me as i was so happy with the many almond flour recipes. Could I substitute coconut flour?
I hate to inform you that coconut flour can never ever act as a substitute for almond they are very different and do not ever exchange well.
I know what your going through as I had to give up almonds for a year.
My advice to you is to look for recipes made using coconut flour. If you can have another nut flour like cashew or peanut, those tend to exchange fairly well for almond flour.
Where I live, we don’t have a Trader Joes, Whole Foods, World Market, or even a Wegmens. We have a dirty Shop-Rite, and overpriced Weis, and Walmart. Ooh, and Target, they just added food! My area prttey much sucks when it comes to finding “different” foods. I’ll have to check the one tiny natural food store that we have though, they might have it. I’m not planning to go gluten free, but the almond flour sounds like it would really add some nice texture and flavor beyond what regular flour has.
That is the beauty of being able to order things online! You can often find better deals that way as well!
I just made these and they are so delicious. Thank you! I used canned coconut milk for my milk, plus only 1/4 cup granulated coconut sugar, and 3 drops of liquid vanilla stevia for sweetening. I also opted to add walnuts. I hesitated at having to grate carrots, ugh, but it only took 2 carrots to make a cup and it was done in a jiffy. I forgot to add the vinegar, but I can’t tell. Does the vinegar help with the rise? They turned out perfectly and look just like yours, minus the icing.So nice to have another chestnut flour recipe!
Nice blog here! Also your web site loads up very fast!
What web host are you using? Can I get your affiliate link to your host?
I wish my site loaded up as fast as yours lol
I use Quality Host Online. Great company- good prices.