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Today’s recipe for Paleo Rhubarb Lemon Muffins is a guest post by Eileen at Phoenix Helix. She is using diet to heal her rheumatoid arthritis. You can visit Phoenix Helix on Facebook, too.

Hello, everyone! Lauren was kind enough to let me write a guest post today. She and I are on a similar journey of healing our autoimmune diseases through the GAPS diet, with adjustments according to our bodies’ needs. My challenge is rheumatoid arthritis, and you can read more of my story on my blog, Phoenix Helix. I made major progress with the GAPS diet, but after 6 months, I hit a healing plateau, which sent me into new areas of experimentation. With the help of the paleo autoimmune protocol, I learned that like Lauren, my body doesn’t like nuts (at least for now). So that means I too have become a fan of coconut flour baking.

Today I’m sharing with you a recipe for Paleo muffins, featuring one of my favorite spring ingredients: rhubarb. If you didn’t grow up with a patch of rhubarb in your back yard, you might wonder what to do with those strange red stalks when you see them at the farmers market. Rhubarb is a vegetable that tastes more like a fruit, and has a sweet/sour flavor that works beautifully in pies, jams and baked goods. Today, I combine rhubarb with lemon and ginger for a muffin you won’t soon forget. If you want to try a savory application, I also have a delicious recipe for pork chops with rhubarb chutney on my blog.

Rhubarb Lemon Lovin’ Muffins

Ingredients

½ cup coconut flour
½ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
zest of 2 lemons
6 large eggs (room temperature)
½ tsp. vanilla
1 Tbsp. fresh grated ginger
juice of 2 small lemons (about ¼ cup)
¼ cup ghee or coconut oil (melted)
⅓ cup honey
1-1/2 cups rhubarb (sliced)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees
If your eggs aren’t already at room temperature, here’s a baking tip: put your eggs in a bowl of warm water, and let them warm up while you prepare your other ingredients. (Room temperature eggs make for lighter textured baked goods.)
In a small bowl, whisk together the coconut flour, baking soda, salt and lemon zest.
In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, vanilla, ginger and lemon juice.
Melt the ghee or coconut oil in a small pan. Add the honey, stirring to blend. (This will liquefy the honey while cooling the ghee a little bit.) Now, add both to the wet ingredients and blend with a whisk.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and whisk until smooth.
Stir in the rhubarb until evenly distributed throughout the batter.
Line muffin pan with 12 liners, and fill each cup with batter.
Bake 24-28 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Put the muffin pan on a cooling rack, and let the muffins cool in the pan for 5 minutes before removing them to the rack to finish cooling.
Note: I buy local, pastured eggs, and they often vary in size. This recipe calls for 6 large eggs. Together, they should weigh between 12-13 ounces, so I weigh my eggs to see how many I need. Sometimes I’ll use 5 jumbos, and other times I’ll use 7 medium ones.

About Phoenix Helix

Eileen’s blog, Phoenix Helix, focuses on healing autoimmune disease through diet and lifestyle. The Phoenix represents rising from the ashes. The Helix represents the magic of epigenetics – our ability to change the expression of our genes and therefore our health. Eileen has reduced her rheumatoid arthritis symptoms by 90%, without the use of steroids, immunosuppressant or biologic medication.