...of gluten free?

Simon is 8 months old. Due to a lack of variety in packaged baby foods and a lack of time on my part, he doesn't have the most diverse diet. He pretty much sticks to apples, blueberries, pears, and bananas, pumpkin, butternut squash, sweet potato, green beans, green peas, chicken and yogurt. We've tried beef (today), mango (once), and he's had carrots, potatoes, and prunes. He had rice cereal a lot when he was younger and then we ran out and I had a container of baby oatmeal cereal. But every time I would give that to him, he would spit up (or more like throw up) a ton for about a day afterward. I've tried giving him Holland toast - which he liked - but the same thing happened. And he looooves the Gerber puffs, but he spits up more the next day if I give him too many of those as well. So, not sure if it's a gluten thing (since the oatmeal seemed to do it to him as well), but we are experimenting with some things.

He basically wants to grab any food at all that happens to be around him and shove it in his mouth. It could be in your hand, on a plate, or on the floor, but he's going to go for it. We have to have, what I like to think of as, the Simon Radius in mind at all times. Is there anything within a stretching arms' reach of this child that I don't want knocked off or put in his mouth? He always seems to go for the bread (of course he does) and so I started thinking of things that I could make him that weren't wheat flour based that he could nibble on. If we were in America, I might buy stock in Baby Mum Mums. Abram loved those. But, alas, I can't find anything similar in this country. But the other day while I was looking in the flour section of the grocery store, I saw rice powder, which is rice flour. And it was super cheap - like $1 for a kilo (over two pounds). So I got it.

Today, when I tried to give him the beef and he didn't seem to like it, I was kind of at a loss of what to make for him for lunch. I need to go to the grocery store and make some more baby food. But I thought maybe I could google a rice flour muffin in a mug that I might be able to give him. Before I found any, I got distracted by this recipe for regular blueberry rice flour muffins. I ended up giving him apples and blueberries for lunch and then making the muffins while he rode in the Beco on my back (Fussy Pants McGoo did not want to hang out in his high chair).

I did a few things differently from the original recipe. My blueberries were fresh frozen. I doubled the recipe. I added about 1/4 cup more milk. I added a tsp of vanilla. I didn't do the streusel topping. In the original post, she said that the batter expanded for her, but mine didn't at all.

I think they turned out great! They taste really good (Quinn and Abram both thought they tasted as good or better than regular muffins) and I think they look totally normal and fluffy. I hate rice milk. It tastes exactly like rice, so I was a little worried that these would taste like rice, but they don't. For anyone trying to avoid gluten, I think this is a fantastic muffin.

So here's my modified recipe:

Makes 12 muffins.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Grease a 12 cup muffin tin.

Ingredients:
-2 eggs
-1 1/4 cup milk
-4 tbsp sugar
-4 tbsp oil
-2 cups white rice flour (powder)
-4 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-1 tsp fresh grated lemon zest
-1 cup fresh blueberries

Directions:
-In one bowl, combine rice flour, baking powder, salt, lemon zest.
-In another bowl combine eggs, milk, oil, vanilla.
-Mix together until combined (my batter was not runny at all, more like scone batter)
-Add blueberries.
-Fill muffin cups about 3/4 full.
-Bake for 15-20 minutes until tops are a little hard, sides are slightly brown, and toothpick comes out clean.
-Let cool for a few minutes before removing from tin.

Si Guy hasn't tried them yet, but I'll update his 8 month blog post with the verdict :) I know the rest of the family will definitely vote to make them again.