Tell me your healthy, nut-free, legume-free baking recipes please!

October 11, 2018 9:39 AM

I've been looking for healthy baking recipes, e.g. cakes, bread, snack bars with no refined sugar, no flour or other processed grains, but a lot seem to use substitutions involving almond flour or other nuts. Needs to be nut-free and also legume-free (i.e. no peas, chickpeas or lentils). What have you got? Bonus if it actually tastes good too!
posted by atlantica to Food & Drink (13 answers total)

This might be more successful if you listed some ingredients that you're okay with? That is, I may be overreading, but no grains, legumes, or nuts seems to broadly wipe out anything I'd think of as a baked good other than meringues. I think I must be reading your exclusions more broadly than you meant them.
posted by LizardBreath at 10:01 AM on October 11, 2018 [4 favorites]

This is kind of a tall brief. This leaves you coconut, rice, potato, and tapioca flours, the latter 3 are really more starches than flour, and maybe something like teff. I use coconut flour a lot (keto cooking, all my recipes are high fat and artificially sweetened) and it's not bad when you get the hang of it, though you're not going to get any gluten so there are some things it does better than others. It's very handy in microwave mug cakes/breads because it doesn't really have a "raw" taste like wheat flour that needs to be cooked out.

Paleo recipes use a good bit of coconut flour (or almond and coconut are interchangeable except they need measurement conversion) and sweeten with honey, maple syrup, and similar, so you might do some searching around "paleo X" to hone in on recipes that appeal to you.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:20 AM on October 11, 2018

Response by poster: Fair point! So for example, I can have:

Sugar substitutes: honey, maple syrop, dates

Flour substitutes: coconut flour, flaxseed

Any dairy is fine.
posted by atlantica at 10:21 AM on October 11, 2018

How about a quinoa-based bread? Doesn't have an absolute ton of flavor on its own, but is great as toast with the toppings of your choice. I've made it quite a few times.

Quinoa Zucchini Toast
posted by ennui_the_people at 10:32 AM on October 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Can you clarify your restrictions? When you say 'flour' and 'grain', are you avoiding a) gluten, b) taxonomical grains, or c) just any kind of milled starch?

If A, you have a lot of options! But I'm guessing not A; mostly asking just to rule it out.

If B, Buckwheat, amaranth, flax, and quinoa (all psuedo-cereals/seeds) make decent baking flours, but you'll have to experiment with ratios to achieve your desired textures. There's also coconut, banana, tapioca and potato flour which are used to bind and add loft to alternative flour baked goods. I've made these coconut sponge cupcakes and coconut brownies and they've both turned out well!

If C, I can't think of a single decent substitute. Sorry!
posted by givennamesurname at 10:41 AM on October 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

A pumpkin muffin recipe I post a lot.
posted by The corpse in the library at 10:49 AM on October 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Love the recipes posted so far, thank you!

Just to clarify:

The nut/legume thing is an allergy, I just can't eat those.

The 'healthy' bit is part of a 30-day reset I am doing, which allows: rice, chia, quinoa, buckwheat, amaranth, millet, gluten free rolled oats, seed flours. but not: processed/refined Foods or Grains – normal bread, pasta, anything made with wheat, rye, barley, spelt flour, cous cous, rice cakes.

Also I am in the UK so some things may be spelt differently or called different names.
posted by atlantica at 10:54 AM on October 11, 2018

Coconut macaroons come to mind-maybe something like this or this? Would probably be improved by being drizzled with or dipped in dark chocolate, if allowed! Also not precisely baking, but I've seen lots of ice cream recipes that use pureed and frozen banana or avocado as a base.
posted by LadyNibbler at 12:48 PM on October 11, 2018

Can you use eggs? That makes a big difference.
posted by Too-Ticky at 12:55 PM on October 11, 2018

Given that you have mentioned coconut flour as one of two acceptable "flour" substitutes, along with a whole host of additional ingredient restrictions, I would like to strenuously emphasize that with many of these (expensive! finicky!) ingredients, but especially with coconut flour, please use recipes that have been designed for coconut flour from the start, like the ones givennamesurname listed. Coconut flour is not an ingredient that you can substitute into a recipe calling for AP flour on anywhere close to a 1:1 basis. See this previous AskMe, where another Mefite tried to do exactly that, and rescuing the recipe would have involved adding 4-5 dozen eggs to the batter.

Off the top of my head, now that you mention seed flours and some interesting grains, I would have a look at the gluten-free archives of 101 Cookbooks (Heidi Swanson works with less mainstream grains and flours); I admit it's a fair bit of hunting for baking recipes in there, but they exist:

- No-Bake Energy Bites - seems to fit if you substitute the peanut butter with a seed butter, like sunflower seed butter?
- Quinoa Hemp Snack Balls
- Double Chocolate Cookies - rolled oats, various forms of coconut

In terms of gluten free baking, the other person that comes to mind for me whose recipes I trust is Liz Prueitt of Tartine/Tartine All Day; I'd see about getting either of those books out of the library to look at the recipes, but I suspect she probably involves nut flours more often than you'd like because her baking recipes typically involve a balance of multiple different flours for various reasons.
posted by Pandora Kouti at 12:56 PM on October 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

The cheesecake recipe copied from here: Breaking the Vicious Cycle

Cheesecake

The cheesecake filling may be made without a crust.

Filling:
3 eggs
1/3 cup honey
1/2 cup homemade yogurt or homemade cream cheese***
2 cups uncreamed cottage cheese (dry curd cottage cheese)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Place all ingredients in blender or food processor (with a metal blade) putting eggs in first so that the blender blades will turn freely.
Blend until smooth stopping, if necessary, every 15 seconds to push ingredients down, scraping the sides of the container at the same time with a spatula.
Pour into loaf pan with or without crust.
Bake in oven at 350°F (180°C) for about 30 minutes or until edges are brown. Cool and refrigerate.
posted by lyssabee at 1:00 PM on October 11, 2018

A little late to the thread, but have a look at Cassava Flour Bread. I've just heard about it and will be trying it soon myself - I'll report back here and let you know how it is.
posted by Brent Parker at 5:03 PM on October 11, 2018

If you don't mind a cereal bar that's a bit wet you can try this recipe, just substitute 1/3 c maple syrup for the brown sugar: http://www.mennonitegirlscancook.ca/2011/06/baked-oatmeal-with-apple-and-cinnamon.html

These two-ingredient cookies are pretty good and super, super, super easy: https://www.cookinglight.com/healthy-living/2-ingredient-cookie-recipe
posted by warriorqueen at 7:07 AM on October 12, 2018