Banana apple pecan muffins

Jacqui had been asking to make muffins for the past few weekends, but we just haven't had the time to. I promised her last night that we would make muffins this morning for breakfast. We are lacking in fruit and veggies at the apt right now, so I looked around and decided to make banana and apple muffins. The muffins were soft and delicious, a perfect breakfast. And the girls loved actually making the batter and the muffins. Feels like a long time since we've done that together. 

Ingredients 

2 large ripe bananas 

3/4 large golden delicious apple, finely chopped 

1/4 cup applesauce 

1/4 cup organic canola oil 

1/4 cup blackstrap molasses 

1/3 cup vegan sugar 

1 cup all purpose unbleached flour 

1/2 cup spelt flour 

1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour 

3/4 tsp baking powder 

1/2 tsp sea salt 

1/2 cup chopped pecans 

What to do 

Preheat oven to 350. Gather ingredients and children. Have girls peel bananas into a large bowl. Given the forks and show them how to mash the bananas. Mash. Add the applesauce, oil, and molasses and mix well. Then add the sugar, flours, baking powder, and salt, and mix well. Mom or dad may have to help with this mixing to get everything combined. Add the chopped apples and chopped pecans. Have the girls put the liners in the muffin pan. Spoon the batter (after the girls have tasted it, of course) into the muffin pan. Bake for 20-22 minutes. Enjoy!

Smoothies

We are loving smoothies in the hot heat of New York this summer. I'm sharing a few of our recent recipes below. Each makes enough smoothie for the four of us to enjoy for breakfast or lunch. :) Just blend all the ingredients together, pour into glasses, and enjoy with or without straws.

Strawberry Banana Hemp Smoothie
This is a lovely pink smoothie with a bit of a tang from the cranberry pom juice.
1 cup vanilla hemp milk
1 cup cranberry pomegranate juice
2 frozen bananas
1 cup frozen strawberries
2 heaping spoonfuls ground golden flax
1 avocado

Blueberry Banana Green Smoothie
This is a beautiful purple smoothie with lots of protein and vitamin C.
1 cup vanilla oat milk
1 cup green juice
2 frozen bananas
1 frozen kiwi
1 cup frozen blueberries
2 heaping spoonfuls ground golden flax
1 heaping spoonful soy protein powder
1 avocado

Not Quite Banana Muffins

I tried to make muffins over the weekend -- Saturday morning to be exact. But I forgot a **crucial** ingredient -- the rising agent! So, instead of fluffy muffins, I had compact, but delicious, things. I don't really have a word for them. But I just finished off the last one. Yummy.

Not Quite Banana Muffins
Ingredients
1 cup whole spelt flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
4 ripe bananas, mashed
1/3 cup organic canola oil
1/3 cup turbinado sugar
1/4 cup water
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup pepitas

What I did
Preheat oven to 350F.
Put the flours and salt into a bowl, let Jacqui mix.
Mash the bananas in another (bigger) bowl.
Give Adrianna her own bowl and a spoon to mix her imaginary not-quite-muffin-batter.
Add the oil and sugar to the mashed bananas, let Jacqui mix well. Add the water and vanilla, and let her mix well again.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and fold everything together. Once it's mostly mixed, let Jacqui mix some more. Make sure to incorporate all the dry ingredients.
Chop the pecans. Let Jacqui add in the chopped pecans and pepitas.
Have Jacqui (is this child labor???) line the muffin tins. Spoon the not-quite-muffin batter into the tins. Bake for 30 minutes at 350F.
This made 16 not-quite-muffins for me. The first set, I put in as if I had remembered the rising agent, expecting some vertical growth. After there was none in the first batch, I just topped the second batch out to the top of the liners, so I only had enough batter for four more. I filled the other muffin-holes with water and baked for 30 minutes too.

Outcome
Not muffins. No rising. Looked really funky. Taste: Delicious! Jacqui ate them. Adrianna ate them. I ate them. Even Dave ate them! Woo hoo! And we finished them in just a few days. Next time, though, I'm going to try to remember the rising agent. Muffins, here we come!

(If you want to make them rise, I think I meant to add 1 or 1 1/2 tsp baking soda to the dry ingredients. Try it out. Let me know if that works!)

ABP2 Muffins

Last night, I made up some yummy muffins. The recipe I was going to make called for appples and applesauce, but my applesauce had mold growing in it (as I found when I was going to give some to A with her rice cereal -- boo) and I only had one apple. What I did have was: two almost too-ripe pears, one almost too-ripe apple, and two super-ripe bananas. So, I made apple-banana-pear-pecan (ABP²) muffins.

Ingredients
2 T ground flax
6 T water

2 super ripe bananas
1/3 cup canola oil
1/4 turbinado sugar
1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups organic all purpose flour
1/2 organic whole wheat flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 T baking powder

1 apple
2 pears
~1 cup pecans (might have been more -- I just used what was left in my jar)

What to do
First, blend the flax and water together until frothy in your blender or food processor.
Then add the other "wet" ingredients (bananas through vanilla) to the blender and blend until creamy.
While blending, before blending, or after blending, mix the dry ingredients in a small/medium bowl with a wooden spoon.
Peal and chop the apple and pears, cutting out any bad spots. Make the pieces small. Chop the pecans.
Pour the creamy blended liquid into a big bowl and add the dry flour mix. Don't over mix to combine, but make sure there aren't any pockets of flour left.
Add the chopped pecans, apples, and pears. Have D fold everything together while I line the muffin pans. Oh! Don't forget to pre-heat the oven! I preheat to 365, because, as we all know, my oven thinks that is 350.
Spoon the batter into the lined muffin tins. This recipe makes 12 big muffins.
I baked my muffins for 27 minutes. The recipe that I based these off said 20 minutes, but my muffins were still sticky in the middle when I poked them with toothpicks. So they kept baking. :) Check your muffins after 20 minutes with a toothpick to see how long they will take.

As you can see from my (sad blackberry) picture, the muffins are very light in color. They are yummy (had one for breakfast this morning with my fruit smoothie) and lent a gentle fall aroma to the apartment as I baked last night. The 20 minutes I had set them for was enough time to eat all the remaining batter (YUM!), clean up and put everything away, and still have time to make and enjoy a cup of tea. :)

Muffins

D's birthday was Monday, and he loves muffins. He normally buys (ugh) muffins at the Key Food down the block, but they haven't been stocking them lately. So, I made three kinds of muffins for his birthday on Sunday and Monday.

Sunday, J and I made banana nut muffins, based off a recipe in The Joy of Vegan Baking, and 8-grain muffins, based on a recipe in The Vegetarian Mother. Monday, I made carrot bran muffins as birthday cakes. (J is on a birthday kick and insisted on wearing birthday hats all day.)

The banana muffins are the most appetizing and appealing on looks. They taste pretty yummy too.

The other muffins are very yummy, but look like health foods (which, I guess they are). I topped the carrot muffins with a vegan cream cheese icing and a birthday candle for the "Happy Birthday" singing, which provided a nice balance to the "healthy" taste and texture of the muffin -- filled with shredded carrot, sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, and bran.

I froze 2/3 of the muffins, and forgot to take photos before the freezing. I will try to take some photos when I take the next batch out of the freezer. And include the recipes.

Added one photo...looks like we've eaten all the banana muffins already! The muffin on the left is the 8 grain muffin and the really healthful looking one (with carrots sticking out) is the carrot bran muffin.