November inspired Ginger Molasses Spelt Muffins, with warm spices of cloves and mace, topped off with a maple-butter drizzle; one of 52 Best Muffins.
Welcome To Muffin Madness – 52 Best Muffins
In my family, I have always been known as the muffin queen, simply because over the years I have created so many different muffin recipes, and still creating!
As a single mom of 4, during those insanely disjointed hectic years raising kids ages 6 to 16, with school, hobbies, work and hormones, I needed a friend!
Muffins became my antidote to madness. My friend.
How? I needed a quick, healthy and affordable breakfast, a to-go snack and I needed the kids to be able to help make them.
Let’s Talk First About A Base Recipe Before I Share My Best Muffin Recipes With You
The good news is that nearly every basic muffin recipe starts out with rather basic ingredients; dry ingredients and wet ingredients, using something to puff them up.
As I pondered every muffin recipe I would create, these were the first two categories I gave much thought to, and where I could incorporate healthy ingredients.
Dry Ingredients, are definitely much more than all purpose flour and baking powder.
This category is the perfect way to build nutritional support into these individual little quick breads.
Options For The Flour Mixture
- Almond flour, or any nut, oat, spelt or barley flake, ground into a flour.
- Whole wheat flour or gluten-free option flour, instead of bleached flour.
- Dry sweetener, can be white sugar, brown sugar, coconut sugar, stevia, or monk fruit sweetener.
- Cocoa powder, carob powder, protein powder, depending on the flavor, or muffin you are making, becomes part of the dry ingredient mixture.
- Warm spices such as our favorite cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, or exotic spices such as Mahlab, Mastic, even root powders such as beets measure into the dry mix.
Wet Ingredient Options For The Best Muffins
- Some type of fat is needed to make for moist muffins and there are so many choices here, from melted butter, a vegetable oil, nut oils, or simply use the fat in almond butter or peanut butter.
- Eggs contribute much of the rising aspect when baking muffins, and while egg substitutes can be used such as flax egg or aquafaba (the liquid in a can of chickpeas), these options work however the rise or texture may not be quite the same.
- Creamy ingredients have so many options, from the basic milk in your fridge (dairy, coconut milk or almond milk), to Greek yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese.
- The wet aspect of the muffin batter must also take into account, when balancing wet and dry, ingredients such as maple syrup or honey, pumpkin if making pumpkin muffins, squashed banana, fresh blueberries or other fresh fruit juices such as lemon juice. These are wet aspects that need balancing along with the dry ingredients.
Best Breakfast Muffin Recipes To Love
Like I said, there are 52 muffin recipes in my cookbook, and I am continually adding more new ones here on my blog.
However, the muffins I am listing here, usually rank at the top of healthy breakfast muffins folks are generally looking for.
- Apple Muffins – Recipe has the added healthy ingredients of oats, nuts and lots of fresh apples for an Autumn hug.
- Zucchini Muffins – European inspired healthier zucchini lemon bread or muffin recipe is made with pure Rapeseed oil, kefir, lots of garden fresh zucchini and two whole lemons.
- Healthy Muffins made of Homemade Breakfast Granola – with oats, bran, spelt, nuts, dried fruits and maple syrup or molasses, is packed with nutrition and no added sugar.
- Strawberry Muffins – this recipe made with millet flour, cottage cheese, both fresh strawberries and dried, can be found in My Muffin Madness cookbook.
- Best Blueberry muffins – are a smoothie bowl To-Go, baked with oats, yogurt, plump blueberries, cardamom, more practical than a bowl!
- Banana Muffin Recipe – are made with barley flour, sweet ripe bananas, olive oil, yogurt and molasses, for the best healthy banana muffins ever.
- Oatmeal Muffins – healthy overnight oat muffins with ginger for our tummy, molasses for bones, oats for everything and cardamom, a cholesterol aid, are muffins for all.
- Sweet Potato Muffins – while this recipe was created around an AB Blood type, and can only be found in my cookbook, its concept was designed from my Sweet Potato Pie.
Best Savory Muffin Recipes
Since I am more of a savory food eater than a sweets eater, I went a bit nuts in creating fun savory muffins that are family favorite whimsical recipes.
Savory muffins are a great way to make a small to-go meal with healthy ingredients.
- Egg muffins – of course these are filled with anything from veggies to sausage and cheese, and are as good for lunch, late-in-the-day snack or a breakfast muffin. Created to be more like a quiche without the crust and are in my cookbook!
- Spanakopita muffins – all the yummy spinach, feta, lemon, fresh oregano and eggs found in spanakopita, made into a muffin, without phyllo!
- Cheeseburger muffins – All your favorite burger ingredients in a muffin batter with another mini cheeseburger on top, pickles and tomatoes!
- Pizza – yes these muffins are also a part of the cookbook and with each bite, you’d swear it was a pizza, with sausage, parmesan crisps and lots of tomato and garlic.
- O-Blood Type Muffin – made with bison or venison, goat cheese, beet greens, pepper flakes and lots of other unique ingredients, this recipe too can only be found in my Muffin Madness cookbook.
Today’s Muffin Is A November Ginger and Molasses Spelt Muffin
It’s the day after Thanksgiving and I’m already thinking about the many beloved foods we long for during the holiday season next up on our calendar.
Can’t you already smell the flavors of fresh ginger and sticky sweet molasses, if only in your imagination!
A gazillion gingerbread houses will be constructed over the next 30 days, and equal amounts of gingerbread men.
So, why not wrap up the last muffin madness of November with a gingerbread muffin!
Baking With Spelt
I did not grow up with spelt. But now I’ve come to realize how much I love the dense, earthiness of spelt flour.
It offers a nutty flavor and a more rustic finish on baked goods. Spelt also feels like such a cleaner flour to cook with; literally.
Allow me to share my ‘flour experiment 101’ with you. When I bake with all-purpose flour, the bowl is sticky and difficult to wash clean.
When I bake with spelt flour, the bowl practically rinses clean with just water before I scrub. Hmmmm, sure sounds like a healthy flour to bake with!
Spelt flour is a type of cereal grain, while wheat flour is a grass. Spelt is more nutritious simply because the bran is in tact while processed flour, has had its bran removed.
For those who find wheat flour more difficult to digest, it is believed that spelt flour is easier on the digestive system.
Many Baking Options With Spelt
Needless to say, once I discovered how delicious, and healthier a flour spelt is, I have created lots of recipes with spelt flour:
- Spelt Potato Sandwich Bread – is an easy to rise, rustic yet dense bread, easily sliced into a sandwich bread.
- Homemade Spelt Crackers – are a hearty dense cracker with spelt flour, herbs and yogurt for snacks or platters.
- Pizza Dough – Spinach Pesto Pizza 2-ways, is the healthier pizza, with lots of veggies hidden in the pesto sauce, a wheat or spelt crust, and options on top!
- No-Roll Pie Crust – has a cookie-like texture, made of crushed nuts, oats, butter and an egg white, that simply gets pressed into the baking dish in minutes.
What’s Not To Love About Molasses
Refining sugar cane into sugar is an interesting process.
Molasses, as we know it, the thick dark sticky sweet liquid that barely pours out of a bottle, is the byproduct made during the extraction of sugars from sugarcane.
While living in Brazil, and visiting a local farm that makes ‘rapadura,’ a type of raw sugar made from sugar cane juice, the process also reduces the juices down to a rich molasses.
This raw sugar brick is rich in minerals and very popular throughout South America.
The richness of this dark syrup is anything but refined. It is, in fact, raw, and I like that!
There is an earthiness to the flavor of molasses, a flavor that reminds me of caramel, only richer.
Add some of our favorite autumn spices to baked goods with molasses, such as cinnamon, mace, cloves, nutmeg and ginger, and we have an almost exotic aroma and flavor that is often associated with holiday season.
Making Ginger Molasses Spelt Muffins
Like most quick breads, the batter for ginger molasses spelt muffins is also quick to mix, and quick to bake.
The warm spices of mace and cloves, along with freshly grated ginger, are perfect for the chill of late autumn.
A drizzle of maple syrup and a little melted butter compliments the spices in the gingerbread, though the muffin is quite delicious all on its own.
Mix And Bake The Best Muffins
Like most muffin recipes of mine, dry ingredients gets mixed in one bowl, wet in another, then the two are mixed and baked in under 30-minutes.
This muffin batter can be baked in muffin tins for easy individual servings, or in a loaf pan to slice and serve family style.
For muffin madness, of course, I am baking these in muffin tins.
Ingredients Needed
- Butter
- Molasses
- Eggs
- Sugar
- Milk
- Fresh ginger
- Spelt flour
- Baking powder
- Baking soda
- Salt
- Cloves
- Mace
- Powdered ginger
- Maple syrup
Equipment Needed
- Muffin pan – either a jumbo muffin pan which makes 6 muffins or a 12 cup muffin pan, either in silicone which require no non-stick spray.
- Muffin baking paper cups
- Mixing bowl
- Measuring cup
- Measuring spoons
- Whisk
- Spoon
- Non-stick spray
- Box grater – for ginger
- Oven
My Muffin Madness Cookbook
Now that I’ve got you thinking outside the box about muffins, are you ready to try other creative and delicious muffin recipes you won’t find anywhere else?
Hot off the press this year: My Muffin Madness Cookbook!
Ginger Molasses Spelt Muffins
Equipment
- 1 Muffin tin 6 jumbo or 12 regular
- muffin baking paper liners
- Electric mixer
Ingredients
- 6 tbsp Butter melted
- 1/3 cup Molasses
- 2 Eggs
- 1/4 cup Sugar
- 1/2 cup Milk
- 1 tbsp Fresh Ginger grated
- 2 1/4 cup Spelt flour
- 2 tsp Baking powder
- 1/2 tsp Baking soda
- 1/4 tsp Salt
- 1/4 tsp Cloves
- 1 tsp Mace
- 1 tsp Powdered ginger
- Drizzle optional
- 2 tbsp Maple syrup
- 1 tbsp Butter melted
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350
- Prepare 6 muffin tins with non-stick or baking papers.
- Place melted butter in a bowl with a whisk, or bowl of an electric mixer.
- Whisk in molasses, sugar, eggs, milk and fresh ginger.
- Sift in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices. Mix gently.
- Divide the batter into 6 prepared muffin tins. Bake 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
- If using drizzle, whisk melted butter and maple syrup together and with a fork, drizzle across the cooled muffins.
I believe the table... that place that draws people to gather, is the most powerful symbol of togetherness. All that happens before the table is set, the planning, the gathering, the preparing, are all an intricate part of the dance that create the mood of celebration to share with friends and loved ones.