Flour Power: Baking with Coconut Flour and Almond Flour

If you’re living a gluten free and/or fat-loss lifestyle, baking with different flours not only expands your pantry options, but can make your weekly menus much more interesting and YUMMY!

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Baking is definitely not something you need to live without while trying to loose fat and gain health. You just have to be smart about your baking mediums by ditching sugar and processed white flours. When baking for fat loss, you need to choose ingredients that help you meet your goals, while still allowing you to enjoy the comforts of homemade baked goods.

Baking with Coconut Flour and Almond Flour

A Little Goes a Long Way: Coconut Flour

Coconut flour proves an excellent option for baking cakes, muffins, pastries and breads. Coconut flour is gluten free, low in carbohydrates and high in fiber & protein. An ideal baking change for those of us living a fat-loss lifestyle.

When baking with coconut flour, it’s important to remember that a little goes a long way. For this reason, you cannot substitute coconut flour for white flour cup for cup. Coconut flour remains much drier than white flour. When baking with coconut flour, reduce the amount of flour in the recipe or drastically increase liquids by using more eggs and/or wet ingredients. A good rule of thumb to go by when baking with coconut flour: 1/4 – 1/3 cup coconut flour replaces every 1 cup of white flour.

Check out all of BeyondFit Mom’s favorite recipes using coconut flour!

Rich & Nutty: Almond Flour 

Almond flour (or almond meal) consists of finely ground, blanched, skinless almonds. Almond flour gives baked goods a rich, nutty flavor and proves perfect for quick-breads like pancakes, muffins and nut breads.

Since its consistency is more like that of corn meal, you don’t want to use it in recipes that require a lot of kneading. Almond flour crumbles easily (especially when not using enough wet ingredients). One of my favorite ways to use almond flour is to bread baked fish with almond meal and herbs – so rich and savory!

Just remember, while almond flour comes low in carbohydrates and high in protein, it also contains many (good) fats. If you bake with almond meal, keep your portions realistic.

Check out all of BeyondFit Mom’s favorite almond flour recipes!

Experiment a little with some of your favorite baked good recipes! You may just find they come out better when you start baking with coconut and almond flour!

Happy baking with increased flour power!

Find more recipes to increase your flour power in The BeyondFit Mom Dessert Cookbook!