Gluten Free Chocolate Muffins with Dried Cherries and Pistachios

Dense and lush with chocolate, dried tart cherries, and a crunch of pistachios, these gluten free chocolate muffins with dried cherries and pistachios are tender and not too sweet.

Sometimes a recipe is just too good to wait on. Still, you've meant to fancy up the finished product a bit, to plate it prettily, to use the big camera to take nice photos -- and so you hesitate. This is a food blog after all. But also sometimes you have a friend - hi Kat! - who's recently had a baby and had mentioned she might be interested in some more whole grain g-f goodness (she was one of my recipe testers for 'Flourless.' so I'm especially mindful of not keeping this one to myself for too long). And you know that while you could bake another batch of these naturally gluten-free chocolate muffins loaded with pistachios and dried cherries you and do all that food blogger-y stuff first -- you really, really should just go ahead and write up the recipe just as soon as you can. So here they are, as-is, Insta-pix only. I'm not sorry.

I made up these lovelies last week to share with my Friday yoga group during our post-zen hang out. We nibbled them along with our Starbucks coffees (un cafe filtre pour moi, bien sur, avec un peu du lait) under a cloudy sky. We talked of this and that and when we parted I did a rushed shopping at the Carrefour and went home with DW and SB to make lunch. I'd had two of these muffins with my cafe and darn it if I wished I had tucked just one more in my bag for afternoon tea. The muffins are not cupcakes, no, though I could almost be convinced to call them little cakes. But I think with the combination of oat and brown rice flours, plus a little bit of ground flax seed, plus the dried fruit and nuts they are more on the muffin than cake side, especially if you crave a sweet treat with (or for?) your breakfast.

I imagine I might play around a bit more with this on the next go - because of course there will be another go -, perhaps using butter rather than olive oil, or upping the ante with some chocolate chips. But as the recipe is written I don't know if I'd really change much of anything. If you don't have cherries you could use cranberries, though I love the sweet-tart of the cherries against the chocolate so! much. You could use a mix of nuts, though if using walnuts I might briefly toast them first. I had buttermilk in the fridge and thought it would do nicely here, and it did, though I'd like to try to veganize these at some point with coffee or soy or almond milk instead. You know the drill -- experiment if you want, or stick to the proportions written below.

Today is: hot, with no break on the immediate forecast. We don't live in the desert per se, and do get a nice sea breeze here, but San Francisco it ain't. I will confess I do rather love these days of endless sun but wouldn't mind another good rainstorm. Maybe in October? 'Til then the kitchen calls ...

Recipe