Sunday, March 9, 2014

Happy Huffle-muffin Day!

Today is international Huffle-Muffin Day. Although Hufflepuffs are known for their love of muffins, today we have staged a mass bake-in. Members of the House of Hufflepuff bake muffins, then, before they are all gone, take and post a few pictures of their muffins.

 

I adapted a recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking to make Banana Nut Muffins. The recipe is actually for Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins. I like chocolate chips as much as the next guy, but I don't think they have a place in breakfast foods. So I left them out. I replaced some of the oil with applesauce and flax oil, and replaced the water with soy milk. I also added about a teaspoon and a half of cinnamon, because I like cinnamon.

I have discovered that some process photos are required, so here goes:
Prepping the muffin tins:
I like to use paper liners in my tins (because my dishwasher gets grumpy when I don't) but when making banana muffins, the muffin will stick to a paper liner. The solution is to either use foil muffin liners, with paper removed, or to try to oil the paper. My first attempt at oiling the paper with a spray like PAM failed, because the spray came out gloppy and ended up as pools of oil. This may be beacuase the product was old. I don't use it very much.
This time I greased the papers with some margarine. Results are OK.

Getting ingredients together:
 Bananas. Sugar in a  large bowl. Applesauce, flax seed oil and sunflower oil in a measuring cup. Dry ingredients in the yellow bowl. Below, some walnuts ready to be chopped.


I roughly chopped the bananas, too. Then I added them to the sugar, oil/applesauce mixture, mashing them up with the whisk as I added them. This incomplete mashing lets me keep some banana chunk in the muffins, but still lets the mashed portions work as an egg replacer.


The dough gets mixed:
 And placed into the muffin cups:

Resulting in yummy muffins. And as we all know, yumminess is why Hufflepuffs like Muffins.

My Adapted Recipe:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare your muffin pans. Foil pan liners work if you remove the paper. Paper liners will stick unless you spay with oil or PAM

Mix together:
2 c unbleached flour
1-1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. baking powder
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t. salt

In a measuring cup place

1/4 c. applesauce
and 1 T flax oil
add enough vegetable oil to make 1/3 cup

In a large bowl whisk together:
The measuring cup ingredients of oil and applesauce
1 cup sugar (raw organic)

4 chopped, then lightly mashed bananas
1/4-1/3 cup soy milk
1-1/2 t vanilla
1 cup of chopped walnuts

Add the dry ingredients to the large bowl and mix everything together.
Divide the batter into muffin cups and cook for 20-25 minutes for small muffins or 25-30 minutes for large ones.

And just because I need one, here is a process collage: