Muffins!

We stretch a lot of meals and snacks with muffins. I have found that just about anything can go into a muffin. I use zucchini, leftover oatmeal, chocolate chips, cheese, left over apple sauce, or even just cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on top!

The thing to NEVER put into a muffin is one of those hard sugary Easter eggs that are pastel colored with white goo inside! NEVER! NEVER! My mom wanted to surprise us one Easter morning with a special eastery breakfast. It was raining and she wanted to make the morning a little less gloomy! Even Jesus wouldn't have tried to resurrect those muffins. Picture faded melted goo in the center of each muffin! Oh those were sad muffins! Bless her heart, we have never forgotten those muffins, so I guess my mom did create a memory that morning!

On to muffin making....I do grind our wheat to make flour, but I didn't always and I like to use a natural sugar. Other than that, just about anything is fair game. Here is my basic recipe. I will say, that sometimes they are heavy, or light or very large muffin tops or not..... It just depends on the ingredients, and if you don't mention all of the ingredients, the children will gobble them up!

Muffins

2 cups flour or 1 cup flour and 1 cup of another grain
1/4 - 1 cup sugar depending on how sweet you like it
1 T baking powder
1 t salt
1 egg
1- 1 1/2 cups milk (I prefer sour milk if I have it)
1/4 to 1/2 cup of some type of fat: coconut oil, olive oil or canola oil

Then there are extras that you can add like blueberries or that 1/2 cup of flakey cereal that's getting pushed back into the cabinet because nobody wants it. You get the picture. You can safely add up to about 1 1/2 cups of add ins. Just be sure you balance the wet ingredients. Remember this isn't a science project and you can fiddle with it as it's very forgiving!

Mix everything together. If you want, you can mix dry and wet ingredients individually or just dump it all. If you are adding blueberries, mix them into the flour first and then they don't fall to the bottom of the muffin. (so they say)

I cook these on 350 and watch them until they are ready. If you want them to go a little further, put them in the mini muffin pans.

Tonight the muffins I made were blueberry and a batch of cinnamon applesauce. I had some homemade applesauce that needed to be used up and I just dumped about 1/3 to 1/2 cup in the batter. I often add vanilla or lemon juice to the batter depending on what type of muffins I'm making.

These freeze well and make a great quick breakfast. I also need to give the book The Tightwad Gazette credit for my muffin madness! She has a Universal Muffin recipe that I based my recipe on. Enjoy!

Hilltop Blessings,
Sheri