Four years old is a big mile­stone. First it was find­ing out from his friends that Hal­loween actu­ally involved candy, and not just parad­ing through the neigh­bour­hood in cos­tume. The fol­low­ing week, K declared that a birth­day party was all about friends bring­ing you presents (It’s ok, kids are sup­posed to be this nar­cis­sis­tic.) and cup­cakes. His spe­cific request was choco­late cup­cakes with vanilla icing and sprin­kles. You can’t blame a kid for hav­ing a vision. Being both a natur­opath and a mother, I revised some recipes to cre­ate a (rel­a­tively) whole food and gluten-free ver­sion of what he wanted.

Two weeks later, K’s birth­day has come and gone, and he’s still talk­ing about when I’m going to make them again. I can safely say that my gluten-free choco­late cup­cakes were a huge suc­cess. Here’s the recipe so you can make them too.

Gluten-free choco­late cup­cakes
2 bananas
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1 egg
1/3 cup oil
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup gluten-free flour mix (I used Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-free All Pur­pose Bak­ing Flour)
1/2 cup cocoa (I used fair trade and organic Camino cocoa pow­der)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp bak­ing pow­der
1 tsp bak­ing soda

Pre­heat oven to 350ºF. Blend bananas, maple syrup, egg, oil and vanilla in a blender. Mix dry ingre­di­ents well in a bowl. Com­bine with wet ingre­di­ents from the blender. Pour into greased or paper-lined muf­fin tins and bake for approx­i­mately 25 min­utes or until a tooth­pick comes out clean.

Makes 12 cup­cakes or 24 mini-cupcakes.

Tip: I used If You Care 100% unbleached bak­ing cups with muf­fin tins but you can use these bak­ing cups with­out a muf­fin pan too!

Cool muffins and top with maple cream cheese icing (recipe below) and shaved dark choco­late “sprin­kles” which I made by grat­ing a Camino Panama Extra Dark choco­late bar.

Maple cream cheese icing
4 oz cream cheese, soft­ened
2 tbsp unsalted but­ter, soft­ened
1 tbsp pure maple syrup
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Cream together cream cheese and but­ter in a large bowl until fluffy. Grad­u­ally add maple syrup and vanilla extract and beat until well combined.