sugar-crusted dried-fruit whole wheat muffin amazingness {a recipe}

the following is an experiment gone yummy. Ot helped me make these semi-sweet (think cornbread or scone-level sweetness) healthy fruit muffins the other day and i wanted to share...

this recipe is a modified version of Joy of Cooking's "basic reduced-fat muffins"...

What you need... vegan options in parentheses

2 cups whole wheat flour

1/2 cup sugar

4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1 egg (or 2Tbsp cornstarch dissolved in 1Tbsp cold water)

3 Tbsp vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup milk (or 1 cup vanilla almond or hemp milk)

1 cup freeze dried fruit, crumbled (we used peaches)

What you do...
1. Oven at 400'F
2. Spray or line a muffin pan
3. Get everything measured and ready cuz you're gonna stir it all together at once
4. Stir everything together at once

5. Pour batter into muffin pan (original recipe says it makes a dozen. we made 9 larger muffins)
6. In a coffee cup (or whatever) mix another 1/8 cup sugar + 1 Tbsp cinnamon. Sprinkle on muffin tops.
7. Bake about 14 minutes (until a fork/toothpick comes out clean)

and voila! feed these to your friends and family. or hide in the closet and eat them all! bwahaha! for reals though, these muffins are so good, healthy-ish, and way easy to make. win to the win.

TGIF guys! this weekend we start hardcore packing (omg i'm so getting spammed by pornbots for saying that). anyways!

we move 2 weeks from sunday so we need to put our packing into high gear! my parents are coming down Saturday to entertain Ot for a few hours while Rob and i disassemble our house, get rid of stuff, pack, or do what i ended up doing tonight --> start packing up photo albums and end up spending hours just looking at photo albums. love photo albums.

oh, and we're going to a build-your-own-pizza party on sunday at a friend's house. i'm really excited about this. lots of kiddos and a fun activity, plus i get to see a few friends again before we skip town. plus pizza is no slouch.

what's everyone else up to this weekend? muffin baking? if you make these let me know what you think!

xo,
Lindsey

A Delish Dish! Egg Free Banana Bread Recipe

This dish was an impromptu discovery the other day when I started peeling a banana for Ot & all 3 bananas on the bunch broke open at the top. The stars had aligned, I was required to use the other 2 bananas for banana bread, I had to! But then halfway through getting all the ingredients stirred together I realized I'd thrown out all our eggs in fear of the Dreaded Salmonella Eggs! Even though we always buy organic eggs, the whole recall thing just freaked me the [beep] out so I'd tossed ours "just in case"... Back to the dramatic banana bread story... (I know you're on the edge of your seat)... So, I thought back to my vegan days and decided to do a little subbing: applesauce for moisture/sweetness/binding and cornstarch for add'l thickening/binding. The result was eggless and sooooo good - extra moist and just 100% a success! Obvi from the pic, Otto couldn't wait to get his chubby little paws on it and he/we gobbled it up!

1. Preheat over to 350'
2. Get your ingredients together:
- 1 1/2 cups flour (I used whole wheat) (but for a gluten-free bread use brown rice flour - you may need a smidge more flour)
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 5 Tbsp butter - melted (salted butter)
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 2 ripe bananas mashed
- 1/4 cup applesauce
- 1 Tbsp cornstarch mixed into 2 Tbsp cold water
3. Stir it all together and pour the gloppy batter into a greased bread pan
4. Bake for 50-60 minutes (until a fork stuck into the center comes out clean)
5. Then set oven to "Low Broil" and broil just a minute or so until the top is nice and browned. You can also brush a little extra butter on top before doing this step. Nom!

My prediction: Just like Van Gogh, you'll eat it all up! Unlike Van Gogh, you'll smile!

Serving suggestions: I lovvvve banana bread crumbled up over yogurt! Or heated and topped with a scoop of vanilla icecream!

-Lindsey