Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Applesauce oatmeal raisins muffins

I had to use up some applesauce so I came up with this recipe.

These muffins are very moist. The raisins could be replaced with 1/2 cup of chocolate chips or nuts, since some people don't like raisins. Hard to believe but true.

2 cups of quick oats
2 cups unsweetened apple sauce
2 eggs
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup packed brown sugar (next time I'd use 2/3 cup)

1 cup all purpose flour or whole wheat if you have it.
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon (next time I'd use 2 tsp)
1 cup raisins

Mix first five ingredients in a large bowl.

Mix remainder of ingredients into a small bowl.

Add dry ingredients to wet and incorporate.

12 muffins at 350 for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick tests clean.



Saturday, March 7, 2015

Oatmeal banana raisin muffins (not muffin cookies)

We're in Victoria, British Columbia. Our escape from the cold that is Ottawa. Which at the moment isn't so cold. I'm glad for Ottawa. But even gladder for us.

We are in a lovely two bedroom condo downtown. Where it's 13 degrees and oh so pleasant. Tons of coffee shops, flowers and sunshine. All gifts straight from God.

Made muffins yesterday. We had eaten a cookie muffin in a coffee shop and it was so yummy, I decided I needed to make some. I'd never heard of "cookie muffins", or maybe it was "muffin cookies", before. They are dense like cookies, but look like muffins.

I googled for a recipe, but couldn't find much, so found a recipe, and modified it. It didn't look or taste like what we'd eaten, but it was still yummy.

I did get a lot of pinterest recipes pop up. But every time I clicked on them, it wanted me to log in or create an account. You know what? I don't want to created an account. I just want the stupid muffin recipe. But no. We can't give it to you if you don't have an account.

I promise you I won't make you log in to get my recipe.

And of course I don't remember the name of the coffee shop we found the muffins, so I doubt it if we could ever find it again. Or maybe we will.

Here's what I made.

2 cups large flake oats
2 cups skim milk
1 cup raisins
1/2 packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup olive oil
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 mashed banana

Soak oats in milk in a large bowl. Add egg and beat. Add oil (next time I'll try 1/4 cup oil) and brown sugar. Add mashed banana. Mix it all up.

In a small bowl add flour (if I had whole wheat flour I would have used that instead), baking soda, salt and cinnamon and raisins. Stir to incorporate.

Add flour mixture to wet mixture and blend together. Scoop mixture into a greased 12 muffin pan.

Cook at 350 for 20 to 25 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean.

I didn't have muffin liners so had to spray olive oil in the muffin pan which is fine, except now the clean up job was a pain in the butt, since you have to clean out each individual muffin area afterwards. I also didn't have any toothpicks so used a twist tie to test for doneness. It worked.

It just occurred to me. Maybe if I had only used 1 cup of milk instead of 2, maybe I'd have actually made the muffin cookie recipe?

The pictures below are from our balcony. They're not the muffins.