I do love muffins for bentos, breakfast, or between-meal snacks, but since I've been trying to stick to low-carb (or at least lower-carb) eating for the last few weeks for health reasons I've had to forego making most of my existing muffin recipes for the time being. The great thing is that it's not so hard to make low-carb muffins, especially if they are the savory kind, since muffins do not need the elasticity of the gluten in wheat flour that yeasted bread requires.

These savory muffins are flavored with green onions and thyme, and taste really great hot or at room temperature. They freeze quite well too - perfect for bentos. The batter mix is based on one for green onion cornbread that is on a great low-carb blog called (unfortunately no longer updated it seems), which in turn is based on a low-carb cornbread recipe on Recipezaar. I've changed things around a bit, adding some thyme which goes really well with onions, substituting some of the butter for olive oil and so on, but the base is the same - beaten eggs and almond meal or flour or ground almonds (or in Japan, "almond poodle"). I did use a type of almond meal/flour made from whole almonds rather than blanched/peeled ones, for a bit of extra fiber. Since there's no wheat flour in this, it's gluten-free too.

Recipe: Green onion and thyme low-carb gluten-free muffins

Makes 10-12 regular size or 20-24 small muffins

(as always, 1 cup = 240ml or 1 standard US cup)

The dry ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups almond meal or flour (210g)
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/3 tsp. salt

The wet ingredients:

• 3 large eggs
• 1/3 cup (80ml) sour cream or crême fraiche (plain Greek yogurt works well too)
• 2 Tbsp. olive oil
• 1 Tbsp melted unsalted butter

The additions:

• 1 1/2 cups (360ml) finely chopped green onions or scallions [sorry, I had this amount wrong previously! Though you can have a bit more or less green onions and it won't make a huge difference ^_^;]
• 1 tsp. fresh chopped or 1/2 tsp. dried thyme leaves

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C / 350°F. Grease your muffin tins if necessary. (I used silicone muffin cups, which make muffin baking so easy.)

Mix the dry ingredients together well in a small bowl.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs until foamy. Beat in the cream or yogurt and oils.

Add the dry mixture to the wet mixture in batches, stirring between additions. Add the onions and thyme.

Put the batter into the muffin tins or cups. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until the tops are a golden brown in color.

To freeze, let cool down completely, then pack in freezer-proof bags or containers. If you used silicone muffin cups, you can freeze them cups and all if you want. Defrost for a minute in a microwave, or just pack a frozen one into your bento box and it will defrost by lunchtime (unless you are in a very cold environment).

One or two of these makes a great low-carb breakfast by the way.