Cookbook: Gluten Free Cupcakes

Elana Amsterdam recently released her second cookbook, Gluten-Free Cupcakes.  Her first cookbook, The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook, had a little bit of everything- great desserts, breakfast items, and some rather tasty entrees, while this new, brightly colored cookbook is 90% sweet, with 10% savory. She focuses on healthier alternative ingredients like almond and coconut flour, agave nectar, grapeseed oil, and coconut oil.  It was hard for me to decide which recipes to try out first, but I finally narrowed it done.

Since I needed a nice side for a meal I started out with the garlic cheddar muffins; easy ingredient list, and I already had everything in the house.  The muffins whipped up super easy and turned out perfectly brown.  I was beyond excited to try one.  Perfectly cheesy; a great punch of garlic; texturally soft and fluffy.  I will certainly add these to my go-to-biscuit-recipe-file in the future.

After such a great experience with the savory recipe, I continued on and made ice cream cone cupcakes. It was difficult to decide which one to make, but when I realized I already had ice cream cones in the house, I knew I had to make her recipe on page 78. I put my cones in my muffin pan and stuffed foil around them as suggested, and then filled them with the cake batter.

The only thing I did different was that I used butter instead of the grape seed oil, only because I didn't have grape seed oil in the house. The cupcake itself was moist, although I do wish I had filled the cones slightly more. Now the frosting didn't look as cool and impressive as the one in the cookbook, mainly because I just knifed it on, but if you put frosting in a frosting bag and squeezing it out, you could indeed replicate her presentation. Flavor-wise, these were great, and they can make a great impression.  It was not a difficult recipe to follow, only a little extra time was needed to make sure the cones did not fall over in the pan.

Ice cream cone cupcakes not your thing?  Well there are plenty more options in Gluten Free Cupcakes. You've got your basic vanilla, strawberry, and red velvet cupcakes, but if you're looking for something more fancy, how about white chocolate cherry, mocha chip, or pina colada cupcakes, and those are just the ones I randomly flipped too.

Wish you had a copy? Well here's your chance to win one!!!!!!!! In order to win your own free copy of Gluten-Free Cupcakes by Elana Amsterdam you must do 2 simple things. The 1st: become a follower of my blog, and 2nd post a comment and tell me what your ultimate cupcake combo would be (please leave your email with your comment so I can contact you if you win. If you don't leave your email, obviously I will not have a way to contact you. Thanks :-)) You have until June 29 at midnight, PST to enter. Winner to be announced on June 30, 2011.