By Popular Demand

Here I was ready to just trash the whole muffin project, sharing the only salvageable part (the photos, of course) before moving on, and all of a sudden, cries for recipes come through plaintive comments. I’ll admit that they don’t look like disasters from the photos, but the reason that I’m stopping work on this muffin ebook is because they’re not amazing, period.

Sure, most of them are fine, but I’m not here to share recipes that are merely passable, and certainly not bundle them into an ebook and expect payment for the whole lot. There are already plenty of awesome muffin recipes out there, so does the world need more that are just okay? I think not.

But I still love all of you out there in the blogosphere, soothing my damaged ego and convincing me that my muffins must not be so bad…

So here’s the recipe for the Superfood Muffins, with one caveat: They’re probably not the best muffins you will ever make. They are, however, very healthy compared to most muffins and are packed with nutrients to give you energy throughout the morning- and they’re still plenty tasty. Besides, you guys all asked for it, so who am I to deny your requests for some muffin love? But after this, I’m not going anywhere near those insidious little breakfast cakes for a solid month or two, minimum. I don’t think my family will let me; I’ve had to promise them that there will be no more muffins to be let back into the kitchen!

Yield: Makes 12 Muffins

Superfood Muffins

Name: Superfood Muffins
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 25 min
Yield: 12
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 2 Cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour; 1/2 Cup Rolled Oats; 1 Teaspoon Ground Cinnamon; 1 Teaspoon Baking Powder; 1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda; 1/2 Teaspoon Salt; 1 Tablespoon Whole Flaxseeds; 1 Cup Fresh or Frozen Blueberries; 1/2 Cup Chopped Walnuts; 2 Cups Cooked Quinoa; 1/4 Cup Olive Oil; 1/2 Cup Amber Agave Syrup; 1/4 Cup Plain Non-Dairy Milk; 1/2 Cup Orange Juice; Turbinado Sugar (Optional)

Full of fiber, vitamins, and minerals to power through your day, these muffins are healthier than most, and still plenty tasty.

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 25 minutes

Ingredients

2 Cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
1/2 Cup Rolled Oats
1 Teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 Tablespoon Whole Flaxseeds
1 Cup Fresh or Frozen Blueberries
1/2 Cup Chopped Walnuts
2 Cups Cooked Quinoa
1/4 Cup Olive Oil
1/2 Cup Amber Agave Syrup
1/4 Cup Plain Non-Dairy Milk
1/2 Cup Orange Juice
Turbinado Sugar (Optional)

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and lightly grease 12 muffin tins.
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, oats, cinnamon, baking powder and soda, and salt. Grind the flaxseeds to a fine powder using a coffee or spice grinder, and mix them in as well. Add in the blueberries and walnuts, and toss them to coat.
Separately, combine the cooked quinoa, oil, agave, non-dairy milk, and orange juice. Once the mixture is well-mixed, pour these wet ingredients into the bowl of dry, and use a wide spatula to combine. Stir only enough to bring the batter together, leaving any small lumps that form in favor of mixing it as little as possible.
Distribute the mixture evenly between your prepared tins, and sprinkle with about 1/2 teaspoon turbinado sugar per muffin, if desired.
Bake for 18 – 22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. Let cool for 10 minutes in the pan before moving them to a wire rack to finish cooling.

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Nutrition Information:

Yield:

Serving Size:

1
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 335Total Fat: 11gSaturated Fat: 2gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 8gCholesterol: 4mgSodium: 212mgCarbohydrates: 53gFiber: 6gSugar: 10gProtein: 9g

All nutritional information presented within this site are intended for informational purposes only. I am not a certified nutritionist and any nutritional information on BitterSweetBlog.com should only be used as a general guideline. This information is provided as a courtesy and there is no guarantee that the information will be completely accurate. Even though I try to provide accurate nutritional information to the best of my ability, these figures should still be considered estimations.

March 6, 2009March 31, 2024

Hannah (BitterSweet)52 Comments

Berry-Crazed

If berry-picking were an Olympic sport, I’m almost certain that my dad and I would at least take a place on the podium. We’ve certainly been training enough; heading out into the “wilderness” after we both get home from work, hunting for that handful of perfect, jewel-like clusters for hours at a time. Truth be told, my dad’s definitely the one who would take gold in this sport, not me. He’s the one who isn’t afraid to push deep into the piles of thorns, entering unknown and possibly hostile territory, filling up buckets of the most ripe, plump berries that no one else can reach. If it weren’t for his enthusiasm, our bounty of raspberries would be rather pathetic indeed. Although his efforts may manifest as long, cat-like scratches tracing up the lengths of his arms, they also resulted in the biggest berry haul we’ve ever had.

There were fresh berries, of course, but even I couldn’t consume the surplus of raspberries quickly enough, so I took many approaches to preserving out delicious haul. Before long, we had frozen berries, dried and dehydrated berries, pureed berries, and of course, baked berries. These local gems are actually far more tart than the standard commercial variety, so they seemed destined to be included in some baked goods, balancing out the sugar perfectly and creating a harmonious combination of sweet and tart.

How serendipitous was it then, that Meeta announced the theme of this monthly mingle would be summer fruits and chocolate! A match made in heaven, chocolate and raspberries were simply meant to be together, and I knew exactly how to use a handful of those hand-picked treasures. Opting to use up some of the lovely red currants waiting in the fridge as well, I ended up with a simply constructed but complex-tasting chocolate muffin.

Although they may be a bit too sweet for breakfast, I find that these can be a wonderful snack, or a slightly healthier choice over a full-fledged, frosted cupcake. Whenever you decide to eat one though, you’ll be glad that you did!

Yield: Makes 12 Muffins

Berry Chocolate Muffins

Sweet chocolate and tart fresh berries join forces in these tender muffins. Call it breakfast, snack, or dessert; they always satisfy.

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 35 minutes

Ingredients

1 Cup Orange Juice
1/2 Cup Olive Oil
1/2 Cup Dark Brown Sugar, Packed
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
2 Cups Light Spelt Flour (or Whole Wheat Pastry Flour)
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 Cup Old Fashioned Rolled Oats
1/4 Cup Dutch-Processed Cocoa Powder
1/4 Teaspoon Cinnamon (Optional)
1/2 Cup Fresh Red Currants
1/2 Cup Fresh Raspberries
1/2 Cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chunks or Chips

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease 12 muffin cups.
To assemble these muffins, start by combining the orange juice, oil, brown sugar, and salt together in a large bowl. Stir to combine, and set aside.
In a separate bowl, sift together the spelt flour, baking powder and soda, oats, cocoa, and cinnamon. Throw all of your berries and chocolate chunks into the dry mixture, and toss gently to coat. Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl of dry, and stir carefully so as not to break up the berries.
Once just combined, spoon the batter into your prepared muffin cups, filling them up about 3/4 of the way to the top. It might seem like a lot of batter, but trust me, it will all fit into those 12 cups!
Bake for 18 – 22 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let rest in the pans for 10 minutes before turning the muffins out and cooling them completely on a wire rack.

Muffin Mayhem

Considering how many people talk about the dreaded “freshman 15,” you would have to assume that there’s actually good food to be found in college, right? Well, maybe on some campuses, but that’s certainly not the issue here. No matter the time of day, trips to the dining hall prove futile, yielding a wilted salad of pale greens and perhaps a few sad slices of cucumber, but little more. Despite their desire to be vegan-friendly, the dining services are anything but, and I’ve been forced to scavenge for meals elsewhere. Of course, I’m sure it’s been obvious by my lack of food posts that this quest could hardly be considered successful by a long shot. Lacking either ingredients or equipment to cook with, baking has been a pipe dream, since regular cooking has been about as easy as performing brain surgery with a dull sewing needle.

Hungry not only for the finished product but for the process that I find so soothing, the alchemy of turning flour and sugar into delicious works of art, even the most impossible odds couldn’t prevent me from trying to bake for long. Smuggling out some ripe bananas from the cafeteria one day, I realized that I could finally scrape something edible together, provided those unreliable ovens in the dorm would cooperate. Starting with a basic banana muffin recipe from VegWeb, it wasn’t long before the mad baker in me was tinkering around again, not content to leave well enough alone even with the barest minimum of ingredients on hand. Luckily, when I saw that the batter was mixing up into a somewhat dry concrete-like substance, I happened to have a jar of pumpkin butter on hand, and a delicious new recipe was born, just like that.

Rising to the challenge both figuratively and literally, the perfect mountains of batter gave me hope for the dismal dining situation. Sure, banana bread has been done a million times in a million different ways so I could hardly say this is anything to write home about, but after such a severe deficit of baked goods, just one bite made a whole month of miserly meals worth swallowing. With just a bit of ingenuity, patience, and a whole lot of sugar, perhaps this arrangement can still work after all… And considering the note that was left on my door after sharing these around the dorm, it seems that the other girls think so, too.

Yield: Makes 6 - 8 Muffins

Banana Pumpkin Spice Muffins

Tender and fluffy yet substantial and satisfying, these muffins are the best parts of banana bread and pumpkin bread combined.

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Additional Time 5 minutes

Total Time 5 minutes

Ingredients

Muffins:

2 Medium-Sized Ripe Bananas
1/4 Cup Dark Brown Sugar, Firmly Packed
1/4 Cup Olive Oil
1 Teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1/4 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
1 Cup All-Purpose Flour
1/2 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda
2/3 Cup Pumpkin Butter

Topping (Optional):

Rolled Oats
Ground Cinnamon

Instructions

Preheat you oven to 350 degrees and either line a muffin tin with papers or coat it with cooking spray.
Mash your bananas thoroughly and add in the sugar and oil, stirring to combine. Toss in the cinnamon, salt, both flours, baking powder and soda all at once, and mix just enough to moisten all of the dry ingredients, but there’s no need to be too thorough. Finally, add in the pumpkin butter and stir that well, being careful not to over-mix. The resulting batter should be rather thick.
Spoon the batter into your prepared tins, mounding it up generously in the centers. Sprinkle oats and cinnamon on top as desired, and bake for 15 – 25 minutes until golden brown, and a tooth pick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Let cool on a wire rack and enjoy.

Notes

This makes a small batch since I don’t have tons of pans with me, so I got 6 standard muffins and 4 minis, but feel free to double this to make more than a dozen. Also, I can’t say that this oven is completely trust worthy since there’s no internal thermometer, so I would just keep a close eye on your muffins while they bake.

Love Muffins

They say that the quickest way to a person’s heart is through their stomach, so it’s only logical that the main fixture of a Valentine’s Day celebration seems to be something edible. While chocolate candies tend to take center stage for obvious reasons, there are endless other possibilities for equally romantic treats, especially for those who prefer something sweet that isn’t such an over-the-top indulgence. … Or maybe at least something delicious they can eat in addition to their truffles and bonbons.

Brainstorming ways to spoil my family and friends, I dug through cupboards full of forgotten baking hardware, searching for perhaps a cute cookie cutter or two. Pushing a rusted baking sheet out of the way, I uncovered a long lost treasure that must have been with our family for a solid two decades at the least: A plastic muffin pan, bearing 6 precious heart-shaped orifices.

Corny and ubiquitous, but after stumbling upon such a find, there was clearly no way around making adorable heart shaped food for this holiday yet again. Having gone the route of sugary chocolate cupcakes last year, I instead opted for something with berries that could be considered an excellent breakfast-in-bed sort of item. Muffins fit the bill perfectly. If that’s not really your cup of tea, all you need to do is whip up a simple frosting and you’ve got another cupcake recipe on your hands, albeit slightly healthier if anything.

No matter how many times I take a gamble and give the fresh strawberries on the market a try, they simply aren’t up to par for an application like this, so frozen are a good dependable option, always consistent no matter the season. Thawing created a good amount of juice which turned my batter a gorgeous shade of pink, but it sadly faded as the muffins browned during cooking. Not an issue in my eyes, but food coloring could also be added if tinted food really gets you going. The only real danger is bursting berries during cooking- You could end up with a bleeding heart!

Ouch!

But in all seriousness, these are perhaps the ideal Valentine’s offering. Moist with a fine, soft crumb, and oh so delicious. Of course regular muffins that don’t take the form of hearts work just as well if you lack the necessary equipment. Whatever vessel ends up becoming a home to your blushing batter, the muffins are guaranteed to elicit gratitude and delight regardless. Nothing is better than a special breakfast for your sweetie, and by making muffins the night before, you don’t even need to wake up early to prepare it. Lightly warmed through and topped with a dollop of strawberry preserves, it may be difficult to find a reason to leave bed again once you present these bad boys to your love.

Yield: Makes 12 Muffins

Strawberry Love Muffins

Moist with a fine, soft crumb and packed with fresh berries, these muffins are a sure-fire way to win over anyone's heart.

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 25 minutes

Ingredients

1 1/2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
1/2 Cup Granulated Sugar
1/4 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
3/4 Cup Non-Dairy Milk
1/3 Cup Olive Oil
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1 Cup Fresh or Frozen Strawberries, Thawed and Sliced

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees and grease 12 muffin tins.
Begin by mixing together your dry ingredients (Flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and soda.) Gently stir in the non-dairy milk, oil, and vanilla but be careful not to over-mix. A few lumps are okay! Fold in your thawed strawberries and pour batter into muffin tins, ¾ of the way to the top.
Slide your filled tins into the oven and cook for 15 – 20 minutes, depending on your oven. Test for doneness by inserting a toothpick; When they’re ready to come out, the toothpick will remain dry.
Fresh out of the oven, they are still young and impressionable, so don’t try to remove them immediately or you will end up with smushed, dented muffins! Allow to sit for at least 10 minutes inside their cooking vessel. Enjoy with someone you love.

Banana Bonanza

Banana breads: One of the most common vegan recipes out there, due to the fact that bananas provide not only excellent flavor, but are also one of the best household egg replacers in a variety of baked goods. With so many dull, repetitive recipes out there, I was a bit hesitant to try one – So cliched, so over done! However, it was from a nontraditional recipe that I revamped from a generic berry / fruit muffin submitted on the Post Punk Kitchen.

As all recipes that I have experimented with coming from PPK, these were drool worthy. Crunch pecans sprinkled throughout and on the top, with a moist center, containing chewy chunks of solid banana. The secret to this unique texture?

…Dehydrated banana chips! Quite hard and even difficult to chew on their own, they take on a whole new identity when rehydrated and dropped into this muffin batter. I had been holding onto these for a while now, trying to figure out how they could be best used… and it seemed there would be no opportunity more perfect. Be warned: Do no make the mistake of using fried banana chips – your results would be and oily and less-than-appetizing mess.

I had almost entirely changed the whole recipe, so I unfortunately was not able to take accurate measurements in my haste. Somehow everything still came together for me, but I’ll have to revisit this one in order to write up a reliable recipe. Stay posted!

As you can probably see from the photos, the nuts on top can burn very easily, so keep a close eye on them in the oven! Mine didn’t even taste burnt, but be aware that nuts can go from raw to charcoal within a matter of seconds sometimes.

This made about 10 relatively smallish – medium muffins for me. I had originally made these for a little luncheon my mom was holding for her friends over the weekend, but I don’t think anyone else ended up eating any… Nonetheless, these were gone very quickly with only her help. If you don’t want to take my word for how fantastic these muffins are, just ask her! She ate four in one day!

If you’re after a more healthy breakfast (or treat), I would try substituting apple sauce for the oil, but other than that, these really aren’t too indulgent.

Banana breads: Not just for hippies anymore.

March 30, 2006November 18, 2025

Hannah (BitterSweet)Leave a comment