Something's missing in these muffins... oh yeah, gluten!

We do love to bake in these parts, and now that the pantry's fully stocked with an array of gluten-free flours (coconut, almon, Trade Joes blend, king Arthurs blend, some xanthan gum and corn meal ... so far!) we plan on getting back into it.  Yesterday my big girl and I had a few hours to ourselves without baby E, so after a few games it was into the kitchen to get down to business!  I was hoping for banana bread so as not to let the extremely (overly) ripened banana in the bowl go to waste, but Z-bug wanted blueberry muffins so out came the GFB (for the second time in a week of owning it) and all the ingredients for Coconut Blueberry Muffins.  With, of course, a few tweaks - with only 1 egg in the fridge but a full container of organic egg whites I had bought for easy frittata-making but haven't used yet, we used a cup and a half of egg white instead of the 6 eggs. I also added a dash (about a 1/2 teaspoon) of vanilla.  And we used frozen blueberries, because it's February.

 Z-bug meticulously measured and poured everything but the xanthan gum - it was our very first time using it and I read the warnings about too much so I wanted to be the culprit if we ended up with hockey pucks.  We didn't!

Princess Z made sure that every muffin would have some blueberries...

We did, however, only end up with enough batter for 10 "almost full" muffin cups - not the yield of 12 the recipe told us we'd get (and I think my muffin pan is regulation size?!)

 Most of them popped out of the muffin tin without effort - minor sticking on a couple (used spray, not paper cups)

                                                               The result? Delicious!


And ... Muffins-ish.  Sure, they taste good - there's that lemony, bakery-ish thing they have from the zest and the coconut flour does add a bit of sweetness and hint of something tropical... but they are, after all, gluten-free. So, they're not quite muffins ... they're Muffin-ish. 

Which, reminds me of a book we recently got.  Though we love "The Dot" and it's delightful main character Vashti by the same author, Peter H. Reynolds's "Ish" I'm not so sure about - sure it's a fun read if your kid's old enough not to internalize nor try to emulate the rotten older brother but I don't love the message that unless it's an exact replica, your drawing is not the actual thing you were aiming for - or even your best interpretation thereof - merely a lesser, not as good, only iSH version...
Feel free to comment to the contrary - please! I really do want to like it, but I only sort of "like-ish" it...