muffins Archives - Authentic Simplicity

Strawberry Quinoa Muffins {Secret Recipe Club}

April 8, 2013 By Anne Simpson

This month’s Secret Recipe Club entry comes from the beautiful blog Delishhh, written by Ewa (pronounced “Eva”), who has a decidedly international flair which is probably the result of being born Swedish and raised in Asia (now residing in the United States in case you’re curious). She also, like me, loves to eat healthy, whole foods, and is an advocate of GMO labeling and enjoying organic foods. I definitely recommend you browse through her blog and check out her gorgeous photos and delicious recipes.

I’ve had her Pumpkin Energy Bar pinned for ages, and still fully intend to make it, but I never seem to have all the ingredients at the same time. I’m working on it, though: I’ve got everything except the pumpkin and I plan to get that this week so I can give her recipe a whirl, and after that, I’ll try some variations using the same framework she used.

I also want to try her White Bean Puree to use as a dip or spread - me and The Boys enjoy our beans, so this will be a nice addition to the bean recipe repertoire!

But what I made this time around was her Blueberry Pecan Quinoa Muffins. I love that Ewa increased the health factor of a not-super-healthy breakfast favorite by filling it with high-protein quinoa and fruits and nuts. Score! I didn’t, however, have any blueberries, and we don’t eat tree nuts around here, so my version turned into Strawberry Quinoa Muffins. We heartily enjoyed it for breakfast, and I have a few more in the freezer to pull out later this week. Can’t beat fast and healthy on a crazy school morning!

Strawberry Quinoa Muffins

Ingredients

1 cup white whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup quinoa flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs
1/4 cup maple syrup
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup oil (I used coconut)
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup cooked quinoa
1 cup chopped strawberries

Instructions

Sift dry ingredients together.
Beat together the eggs, syrup, buttermilk, oil and vanilla.
Stir the egg mixture into the flour just until flour is moistened.
Gently fold in the cooked quinoa and strawberries.
Bake at 375F for 20-25 minutes.

A note about the quinoa flour: It’s super easy to grind whole quinoa into flour using a grain mill like the one I have below (Wonder Mill) - just remember to pour in the grains a little bit at a time (maybe a tablespoon or two). You can hear when the grains have gone through the mill and then you can add more. Once you have the feel of it, you can keep a constant stream of grains heading down the hopper into the mill to make your flour. You can also buy a small grain attachment that will feed the quinoa for you.

Alternatively, as Ewa suggests, you can grind the quinoa in small amounts in a spice mill or perhaps a coffee grinder.

Intrigued by the Secret Recipe Club? Find out more and join here.

9 Comments Filed Under: Breakfast, On The Table Tagged With: muffins, quinoa

Mango Coconut Muffins {Secret Recipe Club}

March 4, 2013 By Anne Simpson

This month’s Secret Recipe Club finds me in the middle of a move. As in, the kind where you pack up every blessed thing you own into a box and drag it across the country only to unpack it all moments later. Only in my case, we’re not quite moving across the country - just about an hour south of where we are now. So no big deal, right?!

Ha! I wish it was no big deal! I kept telling myself all month long, “You’d better make your SRC recipe and write up the blog post before you’re so crazy busy you don’t have time to do it!”. Wise words, yes? Sadly, I did not listen to my own wise words, and so ended up searching for a recipe on Edesia’s Notebook with only a few moments to spare… and not a lot in my pantry.

I found it humorous that the recipe I chose to make from Edesia’s Notebook was one that Lisa, the blogger, had found when she was searching for a fruity muffin recipe… but only had mangos to work with. Oddly enough, I, too, had a mango in my fridge despite the fact that my kitchen cupboards were getting rather bare due to our impending move. So Mango Muffins it was!

(If I’d had the ingredients on hand, I would have gone for one of her delicious sounding egg dishes - Butternut Garlic Quiche, Eggs Benedict Casserole, or Summer Vegetable Frittata. Or maybe her Breakfast Meatballs, which sound fan-tab-u-lous!)

I did not change the recipe significantly, but since I had some coconut ingredients on hand, and since coconut and mango were born for each other, I added a little coconut to the mix. Plus, I didn’t have any ginger, so I experimented with cinnamon and cardamom. Tropical deliciousness!

Recipe: Mango Coconut Muffins

Ingredients

1 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. cardamom
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup raw sugar
1 egg
2 cups mango puree*
1/2 cup dried flaked coconut
1 tsp. vanilla

Instructions

Whisk the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
In a separate bowl, stir together the remaining ingredients.
Combine the dry and wet ingredients and stir just until moist; do not overstir.
Spoon the batter into a greased muffin tin and bake at 375F for 15-28 minutes.

*To Make Mango Puree: Wash and peel a mango. Slice the flesh off as close to the pit as you can. Blend or process until smooth. One large mango will probably be sufficient; I had a medium-sized mango and it wasn’t *quite* enough.

Find out how you can join the Secret Recipe Club here.

12 Comments Filed Under: Breakfast, On The Table Tagged With: muffins

My Favorite Recipes: Wheat-Free Vegan {Delicious} Oat Muffins

April 23, 2012 By Anne Simpson

Recently, I was thrilled to find a great new (to me) blog called The Austerity Kitchen. Then I was bummed to find out that it was no longer publishing new material. I hate it when that happens! Thankfully, the authors posted a fabulous vintage oat muffin recipe before they moved on to greener pastures, and that same oat muffin recipe has since become my go-to muffin recipe.

There were two things I loved about The Austerity Kitchen: one, that it had vintage recipes; two, that those recipes came from times and places when certain foods were scarce and home chefs learned how to make do. My kind of recipes! I love that previous generations - who knew little about food sensitivities and allergies - can teach our generation about gluten(or wheat)-free and vegan cooking. Even if they were neither gluten-free nor vegan. Yup. Totally cool.

I did have to slightly adapt the recipe to make it completely vegan, replacing the egg with flax gel. In fact, this recipe is actually quite sturdy, and I’ve replaced both the egg and the fats with fruit or vegetable purees (banana, pumpkin, sweet potato, etc.) and it still turns out fabulous. Unlike most wheat-free vegan baked goods, they aren’t very crumbly. More crumbly, I suppose, then wheat-based muffins bound with egg, but not as crumbly as your typical wheat-free vegan product. I’ve also used all different kinds of sweeteners (molasses, honey, unrefined sugar) with equal success.

Here’s the basic recipe, with some suggested adaptations that have worked for me.

Wheat-Free Vegan Oat Muffins

Ingredients

2.5 cups oat flour
1 TBSP baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup rice milk (or any milk)
1 egg (or egg replacer, or 1/4 cup pureed fruit such as banana, pumpkin or sweet potato)
2 TBSP molasses (or honey, or unrefined sugar)
1 TBSP melted palm shortening (or coconut oil, or olive oil, or melted butter)

Instructions

Whisk together the dry ingredients. Stir in the liquid ingredients. Evenly divide the dough into 9 portions in a greased muffin tin. Bake for 25 minutes at 350F.
*Egg Replacer: 1 TBSP flax or chia meal combined with 3 TBSP hot water

Don’t you love those super QUICK instructions? They take almost half an hour to bake, but the mixing up time is minimal.

These are some of the EASY-est wheat-free vegan muffins I’ve had the privilege of trying. Hence they have become my favorite!

Oat flour is an excellent and CHEAP replacement for what flour if you have allergies or sensitivities. It can be gluten-free if you have gluten-free oats. But don’t waste money on store-bought oat flour: just grind old-fashioned oats 1/2 cup at a time in your coffee grinder, or dump the whole lot in your food processor.

These are very HEALTHY with lots of good fiber, minimal (and healthy) sweeteners, and extra vitamins from the fruits and vegetables (if you use them).

Do you have a go-to muffin recipe?

23 Comments Filed Under: Breakfast Tagged With: muffins, my favorite recipes, oat flour

Pumpkin Muffins… but Savory!

October 17, 2011 By Anne Simpson

pumpkin muffins

I will be the first to admit that these pumpkins will not win any beauty contests. Thanks to the oats, they have a crumbly texture and bumpy exterior, and thanks to the lack of eggs and sugar, they don’t bind together and rise quite as well as a good little muffin should. But before you turn around and head back out the door - or off to your next blogging adventure - they do have a redeeming quality!

Two, actually:

They have no sugar.
They are moist and delicious! Dee-lish-us, I tell you!

These ugly little savory muffins have amazing flavor that is the perfect accompaniment to an autumn soup. I served ours with potato soup, and it was a match made in heaven. So who cares what they look like? They taste good, and after all, that is the point.

Ugly Savory Pumpkin Muffins

adapted from love food eat

Ingredients

1 cup white whole wheat flour
1/2 cup oats
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried sage
1 tsp rosemary
1 tsp parsley
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree
1/2 cup olive oil
1 TBSP vinegar

Instructions

Whisk together dry ingredients in a large bowl.
In a separate bowl, stir together the wet ingredients until well combined.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, stirring just until combined.
Scoop batter into greased muffin tin and bake at 350F for about 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Muffins are such a great QUICK bread that you can serve with soup or salad for a light dinner or lunch.

And so EASY, too! Just be sure not to overmix the batter, or they will get really tough.

This particular recipe takes a lot of pumpkin, so it’s not necessarily CHEAP (depending on how much you paid for said pumpkin). Around here, that’s at least a couple dollars. However, this time of year is the cheapest pumpkin’s gonna get, so now’s the time to make them!

These muffins are probably the HEALTHY-est I’ve ever made. They have no sugar, use whole grains, and are largely based on a very healthy vegetable. Very healthy, indeed!

Linking to Tasty Tuesday and…
Hearth & Soul Hop Tempt my Tummy Tuesdays

3 Comments Filed Under: Beverages, Bread, On The Table Tagged With: muffins, pumpkin

SRC: Chocolate Banana Cinnamon Roll Muffins

September 12, 2011 By Anne Simpson

Welcome to the September edition of the Secret Recipe Club, where we get to secretly snoop out a fellow foodie blog and try new recipes on the sly. Today is the grand reveal, when we all find out who was snooping around our blog and trying out our recipes! I look forward to it all month long; it’s almost like Christmas once a month!

This month, I had the pleasure of snooping around Dinners, Dishes and Desserts, written by Erin, a SAHM to a little boy, and a “Midwest girl who loves to cook and bake”. She has a lot of Asian inspired recipes that I strongly considered, like Asian Meatballs for example, but in the end I went for a sweet breakfast treat. Silly of me, for someone who blogs about “healthy food”, I know! I had a good reason, though: I was attending a bridal shower brunch, and I purposely signed up to bring a baked good so that I knew there would be something there that I could eat (dairy-free and egg-free). And not that you care, but I’m glad I did, because pretty much I ended up eating my muffin and a ton of fruit! (mentally patting myself on the back for my think-ahead smarts)

Oh, which breakfast treat did I make, you ask? I started with Erin’s Cinnamon Roll Muffins (by the way, she has lots of awesome muffin recipes, this is just one of many that I considered!). Now, Cinnamon Roll Muffins would be perfect just like that, but I added my own special twist and turned them into Chocolate Banana Cinnamon Roll Muffins. I suppose a little over the top… but so worth it!

Here are the specific changes I made:

I replaced the egg with banana, mostly because I was getting a little tired of using flax gel as a substitute, but also because I wanted to add a little banana flavor. Smart move; the result was a delicious and flavorful muffin!
I used raw sugar instead of brown sugar, and reduced the amount of sugar in the filling (you know, so I can pretend it’s healthy).
I used part white whole wheat flour. See, healthy!
Added a little cocoa and doubled the cinnamon in the filling.
Swapped out the powdered sugar glaze for a decadent chocolate glaze that took the muffins over the top.

Chocolate Banana Cinnamon Roll Muffins

Ingredients

Dough:

½ cup raw sugar
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ tsp vanilla
1 banana, mashed
1 cup buttermilk*
1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

Filling:

2 TBSP butter, melted
1/2 cup raw sugar
1 TBSP cocoa
2 tsp cinnamon

Glaze:

2 TBSP palm shortening (or softened butter)
2 TBSP cocoa
1 cup powdered sugar
2+ TBSP hot water

Instructions

Dough:

Whisk together the sugar, baking soda and salt. Add banana and vanilla; stir together. Add buttermilk and stir again. Add flour and stir until blended. Place dough on a floured countertop and knead gently for about a minute until you have a soft roll-able dough. Roll the dough into a large rectangle.

Filling:

Stir together all filling ingredients and spread over dough with a pastry brush or small silicone spatula.

Assembly:

Roll the dough and filling up jelly-roll style. Slice into 12 pieces (I measured about 2-3 finger widths for each one), and place cut side up in lined muffin tin (or silicone muffin pan).

Bake:

Bake at 375F for 15 minutes. Allow to cool in pan for a few minutes. Place a sheet of wax paper under a wire cooling rack; gently place slightly cooled muffins on wire rack to cool completely.

Glaze:

Stir together the shortening, cocoa and powdered sugar in a small bowl with a fork until crumbly. Add hot water, 1 TBSP at a time, until you have achieved the desired consistency (mine took 2 1/2 TBSP). Drizzle over cooled muffins. Allow time to set before serving.

*I just added some lemon juice to non-dairy milk.

Considering that you have to roll out the dough and do the whole cinnamon roll, thing, this is not as QUICK as most muffin recipes.
It is much EASY-er, though, than regular cinnamon rolls, but with much of the same flavor, if not exactly the texture.
It’s pretty CHEAP, using mostly basic pantry ingredients that most people have on hand.

As for HEALTHY, well, no, not really. I feel good about the healthy swaps I made, but in the end, it’s still a treat that should be reserved for special occasions. Like bridal shower brunches, for example. Anybody getting married?

Want to join in on the Secret Recipe Club fun? It’s easy; just follow the instructions here . Many thanks to Amanda of Amanda’s Cookin‘ for organizing all of this, and hosting Group A this week!

I’m also posting at Your Recipe, My Kitchen, Sweet Indulgences Sunday, and These Chicks Cooked.

Check out the other Secret Recipe Club reveals below:

28 Comments Filed Under: Bread, Breakfast, Home, On The Table Tagged With: muffins, secret recipe club

Triple-Ch. Muffins

March 14, 2011 By Anne Simpson

I signed up to bring muffins to a ladies’ brunch this past weekend, not knowing exactly what kind of muffins I could bring, but knowing that in any case, muffins were a fairly Quick, Easy, Cheap and possibly Healthy choice for a brunch menu. As I mentally wandered through my kitchen, picturing what few ingredients I had left (this was before my big monthly grocery shopping, more on that in my next post), my mind’s eye settled on the container of cherries perched in the freezer. Perfect.

But cherries, delicious as they are, are much better when paired with chocolate. Naturally. (Isn’t everything much better when paired with chocolate?) And chocolate muffins, as delicious as they are, are even better when paired with the flavor and texture of cheesecake.

Oh yeah. Now we’re talking!

I gave a shout-out on my FB page, but nobody apparently had a recipe for such a creature, so I was left to my own devices. Always dangerous. I searched and searched (OK, went through a few pages on Google) but could not find a recipe anywhere for Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake Muffins. Really?! I was the first person to think of this amazing combo? (I highly doubt it; I’m sure there’s a recipe somewhere in cyberspace, but I couldn’t find it).

However, there were plenty of recipes for chocolate cheesecake muffins, so I compared 3 different variations, and came up with my own, to which I added cherries.

And there you have it, folks: Cherry Chocolate Cheesecake Muffins. (Hence the Triple-Ch)

Triple-Ch (Cherry Chocolate Cheesecake) Muffins

Cheesecake Mixture:

4 oz. cream cheese, softened

1 TBSP honey

1 egg

Muffin Batter:

1 cup unbleached AP flour

1/2 cup white whole wheat flour

1/2 cup raw sugar

1/4 cup cocoa powder

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup fresh or frozen cherries

1 egg

3/4 cup whole milk (replace 1/4 cup with cherry juice, optional)

1/4 cup butter, melted

Beat cheesecake mixture ingredients together in a small bowl with a hand mixer until smooth, and set aside. Whisk together dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl until blended; stir in cherries (if using frozen, drain and retain cherry juice to add later with the liquid). In a 2-cup glass measuring cup, stir together egg, milk (and cherry juice if using), and melted butter. Pour into dry ingredients and stir just until moistened. Divide muffin batter evenly between 12 muffin cups (grease muffin tin well, or use paper liners). Top each with a dollop (about a tablespoon) of cream cheese mixture. Use a knife to marble-ize the two batters (alternatively, you can leave the cream cheese mixture on top without incorporating it into the batter, but it’s not as pretty as the marbled effect). Bake at 400F for 20 minutes, or until toothpick inserted comes out dry.

marble-izing the muffins with a knife

This is perhaps not as QUICK as other muffin recipes, what with the extra cream cheese mixture, but totally worth it! They still come together in half an hour, give or take a few minutes.

Very EASY, although there are a few extra dishes to clean up afterwards.

With the addition of cream cheese and cherries, these are not the CHEAPest muffins, either, but here is where prior frugality shows its worth. I only ever buy cream cheese when it goes on sale for $1 or less, and then I stock up, so that is the cream cheese I used. Also, the cherries were frozen last year when cherry prices hit rock bottom for the season.

I was pleased with my HEALTHY alterations to the recipe: