These little cakes are so easy to stir together for Valentine's Day or any day! There's just enough sweetness from the honey for these strawberry-almond heart cakes to be more cake than muffin. The combination of almond, coconut and tapioca flours become light yet filling when baked together. The little cakes are ready in just about an hour!
And of course they are gluten-free and grain-free. They're full of flavor from the addition of almond extract, and moist and satisfying.
This recipe makes the perfect amount of batter for the six little cakes shown here. For the twelve cakes that would fit in a larger muffin baking pan, double the recipe. To cut down on oven time, bake them in a mini-muffin tin, in which case it would give 24 mini's.
Because the muffins might be hard to remove from the tin because of their heart shape, I use unbleached, brown parchment liners. I prefer the brown parchment liners to avoid any dioxin that could leach into the food from bleached-paper ones.
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If you make this recipe, please leave me a comment so that I know how it went!
Beth
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Strawberry-Almond Heart Cakes
Ingredients
- ¾ cup full fat coconut milk
- 2 tablespoons honey
- ⅛ cup ghee or coconut oil
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon almond extract
DRY INGREDIENTS
- 1 cup almond flour
- ¼ cup tapioca starch
- ¼ cup coconut flour
- ½ teaspoon gluten-free baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt such as Redmond pink salt
TOPPING
- 3 strawberries green top removed, halved
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Line muffin pan with parchment liners.
- Combine the honey and ghee in a mixing bowl, stirring constantly to prevent the honey from settling to the bottom of the ghee. Add the coconut milk, egg and almond extract, stirring after each addition.
- Combine the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl and stir until combined.
- Pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, stirring until completely mixed. Transfer the batter by spoonfuls to the prepared muffin liners, nudging it into the heart shape.
- Top with one half strawberry each, pressing down gently.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the little cakes comes out clean.
- Allow little cakes to cool completely before removing them from the pan, as they are rather delicate.
Notes
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Arianny Rodriguez
This looks fantastic. Do you have a recommendation on what to substitute for almond? My daughter is allergic to nuts.
Beth
Arianny, thanks for your comment. I've been trying recipes without nuts too, while my daughter-in-law has been avoiding them. Can your daughter eat sunflower seeds? I made sunflower butter for my baked apple recipe, but I've used almond butter in that one. In the apples I mixed sunflower with sesame. Also I posted a mini-muffin recipe that is tree-nut free. Will that help? Let me know. Beth
Lenee
I’m seriously thinking about trying this recipe. Every time I eat bread I feel sick. Same goes for most gluten foods. I’ve been scared to switch over because I love baking and have good gluten filled recipes. I love that you include the calorie info!
Beth
Hello, Lenee, sorry to hear that you have had that reaction to eating gluten foods. I also love bread and understand how you could be reluctant to stop eating it. I was told once that it could be yeast overgrowth rather than the wheat itself, but working on that didn't help as much as minimizing wheat. The nice thing about this recipe is it makes just enough to give them a try. And you can just imagine they are big almond cookies! If you are interested, if you subscribe to my blog I have 10 steps to gluten-free eating as a download. Those tips are from my experience in the switch. Good luck!