speculaas mini muffins

Maybe it's my Dutch background, but I've always had a mild obsession with speculaaskruiden. It's a spice mix made up of cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, mace, cardamom, coriander seed, anise seed and white pepper. It's traditionally used to flavour sweet biscuits. I wanted to bake something with the lovely spiced flavour, but without the sugar and flour. So I came up with these little muffins.

They are grain-free, fructose-free and deliciously moist (I can't stand the word 'moist' but can't find an appropriate synonym) thanks to the secret ingredient: sweet potato. I've simplified the spice mix to suit what I always have in my pantry, while still maintaining the key flavours. So hopefully you won't need to go out and buy a whole range of new spices. 

ingredients

• 1 cup baked sweet potato, mashed
• 2 tbsp raw virgin coconut oil, softened
• � cup rice malt syrup
• 2 eggs
• 1� cups ground almonds, plus extra for sprinkling
• � tsp salt
• � tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1� tsp ground ginger
• Pinch of ground cloves
• Pinch of ground nutmeg

preparation

1. Preheat your oven to 170�C.

2. Beat the sweet potato, coconut oil, rice malt syrup and eggs until well combined. 

3. Combine the remaining dry ingredients in a bowl, then fold through the wet ingredients until just combined.

4. Spoon mixture into mini muffin cases and bake for 15-20 minutes or until tops starting to crack. 

Makes 20 mini muffins.

NB: I use a 20ml tbsp. If you have a 15ml tbsp (if you're in the US or UK), you can measure out 4 tsp in place of each tbsp.