I adore the smell of fresh baked banana bread, well any bread really.
Today I decided to go on an adventure in baking land and try something new and different for me, flax seeds and banana.
I've tweaked my previous recipe for corn muffins a bit and have been playing with them by adding different fruit and herbs to them depending on my mood. I found out that peach was a bad idea, after 2 days the area around the peach chunks turned green! Yikes!!!! Blueberries are a good fruit to mix, as were scallions and goat cheese, peanut butter, and honey.
Since I've been in the mood for banana bread lately (perhaps because there is a slight chill in the air) I figured it was time I try banana muffins. I decided to also try out adding ground flaxseeds to the mix for health benefits, and I swapped from Almond to Hazelnut milk only because I've never tried it before.
Recipe
2 cups Cornmeal
+/- 1/4 cup flaxseed meal
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 sprinkling of cinnamon
few pinches of salt
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup hazelnut milk (or any milk you have handy)
1/2 cup apple sauce + honey (I'll explain)
2 bananas
Peanut Butter (optional)
*Makes 12-16 muffins depending on size*
Directions:
Just like last time, mix the dry ingredients in one bowl, and the wet in another. Mix each separately, then combine, stir, and add mashed bananas. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes. Done.
Now, for my apple sauce + honey combination. You could do 1/2 cup of honey, which I was doing for my first few batches, but that got expensive, so I began supplementing my honey with applesauce (which also acts as a binding agent since I have no eggs). What I have been doing is buying a babyfood jar of applesauce pouring it into a 1/2 cup and then topping it off with honey. The applesauce takes up about 3/4 of the 1/2 cup. For me this is a good combination. The reason I purchase babyfood rather than regular applesauce is two-fold. For one the ingredients are identical between the two, and secondly I would never use all of the full sized applesauce before it goes bad and I hate to waste food. This way I use it all at once, spend $0.70, and have a storage jar for later.
Another of my favorite things to do is to fill my muffins with something. For these I filled them with honey roasted peanut butter from Whole Foods. I love the whole foods peanut butter because I can grind it myself. What I do to 'fill the muffin' is I put a little bit of batter at the bottom of the muffin pan, place a scoop of peanut butter down, then cover with some more batter. When you're finished you have a nice treat right in the center.
Healthy, all natural, and delicious breakfast treat. How can you beat that?!
