You Pinspire Me
I love baking. I love eating baked goods. Problem is, the baking that I’m good at is largely unhealthy for me, and really not good for my son to eat – it contains white flour and a lot of sugar. Even ‘healthy’ baking, like zucchini bread, has more refined carbs & sugars than I should be eating, and my poor wheat-free son can’t eat it at all.
{I would just like to mention that I completed the ‘Biggest Loser’ challenge about 3 weeks ago, and during a 6 week long period during which I altered my eating by simply removing almost all refined carbs & sugars from my diet and increasing my level of physical activity about 75% (I really wasn’t doing much before, so increasing by 75% was neither hard nor impressive. Don’t be impressed.), I lost 7% of my body weight! Hurrah! I still got to eat super tasty things in normal servings, I ate when I was hungry, I snacked at night (popcorn with coconut oil & ranch dressing mix – yum!), and I still lost 7% of my body weight! That was *nearly* enough for me to win the competition – or at least, nearly enough for me to be the runner-up (she beat me by .2%), but I’m happy with my accomplishment none-the-less. That is how I know that avoiding simple & refined carbs is the best choice for me and for my body.}
Anyhow, when I found this recipe for Grain free Banana Nutbutter Muffins, I was instantly in love. Muffins with no flour of any sort – that look AND taste like REAL MUFFINS? Sign me up! I make them about every 3 days in our house – and when I use natural almond butter or peanut butter, I don’t feel badly in the least about consuming any ingredient in them!
This week at the grocery store, I saw zucchini and thought, I would really love to make some zucchini muffins! And so, I figured I’d give this recipe a go with a few additions. Here we are:
The Recipe
- 1 cup any nut butter -natural leaves the excess sugar out of the recipe!
- 2 VERY ripe banana (very spotted)
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 Tablespoon coconut oil*
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 cup shredded zucchini (roughly 1/2 a zucchini)
- 2-3 Tablespoons mini dark chocolate chips**
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Place first 6 ingredients in the food processor.***
- Blend until well mixed, batter will be thick
- Pour into bowl, stir in last 3 ingredients.
- Pour batter into a greased muffin tins (I love my silicone ones for this, no greasing necessary).
- Bake in a 400 degree oven for 16-19 minutes. They muffins may appear to be doughy, but touch with your finger – as long as there’s a bit of spring back, your muffins are done.
- Cool in tins for 5 min, then transfer to baking rack.
- Especially in this weather, these muffins are best stored in the fridge if they’re not going to be completely gone within 24 hours – they do tend to mold very quickly.
*There is no need for oil in this recipe, it’s very moist without it, but our naturopath said that using a lot of oils in a diet (particularly, ‘healthy’ oils like coconut) helps with the digestive system – it ‘greases’ it up, so to speak – and since our son has issues with constipation (why we avoid wheat), I like to add it to as much of his food as I can. So you can feel free to leave it out.
**Use chocolate chips best suited to your diet – if you’re gluten or dairy free, I’m sure you have the sort of chocolate in your house that works best for you, anyhow.
***This can be made with a hand blender as well, as long as your bananas are good and purreed before you add the other ingredients.
Jenn vanOosten
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