Myriad Muffins

My mom found the original recipe for these muffins in the newspaper when I was a teenager.  She's been making them ever since whenever she's had bananas to use, or birthdays roll around; these are absolutely one of my favorite muffins.  She made them for me when I was in college and would send them back to the dorms with me... nothing says yummy more than mom's muffins.

When I started clean eating I thought of this recipe and how it was already almost clean.  It just needed a few tweaks here and there to remove the processed ingredients.  I was excited to share this recipe because, as I named them above, they can be made in a myriad of ways.  It's actually possible to make this recipe every single day of the week using different ingredients (you'll see what I mean) and come up with something that tastes totally different.

When you're feeling limited (which happens when you're dieting or facing a lifestyle change) having the options to make something taste different but still be good for you is so refreshing!  You don't have to wonder if it's good for you, you just know already!

So in the last week or so I've set about converting this recipe for clean eating as well as accommodating myself (and my own clean eating goals, in which I'm striving to go gluten free).  What I've come up with is a base recipe I hope you'll love!  I'm also dying to know what combinations you can come up with and what you think would be good!  


Myriad Muffins

1 cup oats
1 cup flour *
3/4 cup turbinado (or equivalent sugar substitute to taste)
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup almond, rice or soy milk
1 egg, beaten
2 Tbsp coconut oil, melted
4 Tbsp moist ingredient **
fruits or nuts as stir-ins, optional

* several different flours can be used in this recipe.  I opted to use oat flour.  Whole wheat flour or rice flour would work fine as well.

Add all ingredients into a bowl, stir.

**  Add 4 Tbsp moist ingredient.  For this batch I chose to use banana.  You can use almost anything "moist" as pictured below.  Fruit juices, nut butters (sorry, I didn't have any organics in the house), apple sauce, apple butter, cooked/mashed squash, honey (you may want to reduce the turbinado a bit if you opt for honey)... you get the idea.  If it's soft and moist it can be used as the moist ingredient.  Stir into the muffin batter.

Stir-ins:  This is where it gets really fun.  You can dump about anything into these muffins.  Chopped apple or bananas, nuts of all kinds, grated carrot, squash, zucchini, spices, whatever.  You can make "carrot cake" muffins, or banana-nut muffins as I did with this batch.  I simply chopped up the leftover banana, dumped it in with some chopped almonds I had in the freezer as well as some cinnamon and nutmeg.  In the summer you can use your zucchini... Apple cinnamon muffins... you get the idea.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees, fill muffin tins 2/3 full.  Bake 18-20 minutes or until golden brown.  If you use the large muffin tin like below, up your time to about 23-24 minutes, depending on your oven.

ENJOY!