Ginger for your tummy, molasses for your bones, oats for just about everything and cardamom, the ancient Mediterranean spice and best friend to your cholesterol, that flavors these muffins in a way you can’t say no to!
Muffin Madness!
In my family, I have always been known as the muffin queen, simply because over the years I have created about 25 different muffin recipes, and still creating!
As a single mom of 4, during those insanely disjointed, hectic years of age 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.
Easy Muffin Mix
Here’s the thing about muffins, they need only 3 components; wet, dry and a rising agent. A mud-like consistency (called a batter), of just about anything that fit the criteria. Wrap your head around that for a minute!
Open your fridge for a second and look at all the potential wet ingredients: pureed veggies or fruit included.
Look in your pantry at the wealth of dry ingredients, ground-up nuts, grains and seeds included.
Rising agents can be as easy as baking soda and baking powder or lots of whipped egg whites.
My mind went wild with ideas AND just last weekend, with autumn leaves falling to the ground, I even eyeballed those ping ping ping acorns falling to the ground. Yes I did! I boiled, roasted, shelled and ground those little beauties into flour and they taste much like roasted chestnuts. Sorry squirrels!
Healthy Muffins
Back in the 80’s when my kids were in those hectic years of growing up, muffins came on the scene in popularity. Problem for me? They were often already in a premix from the grocery store (expensive and preservatives), or the recipes circulating at the time were gosh-awful unhealthy!
I quickly changed that, created my own recipes (yes, I was a foodie long before that was a thing or before blogs), then fast forward 40 years (good heavens!), and I have a huge repertoire of healthy muffins I CREATED!
Healthy Weekends
You know as well as I do, the weekdays are often a storm of activities, hardly giving us a second to catch our breath. The weekends arrive, spewing us out in exhaustion but with a few quiet cups of coffee or tea sipped over a favorite magazine or the Sunday paper (yes, everyone back then read the paper, on paper, on Sunday mornings), and you begin to restore, reboot and regain a healthy mindset that will carry you through next week.
Healthy weekends, for me back then, always meant I would spend quality time with my children. I couldn’t think of a better way to do that than to get them all in the kitchen, give each their own work space, set out ingredients and a hand written recipe for a different muffin each of them would mix up and boom… meal prep for the week ahead became family time, laughter, chatter and togetherness AND mama was better prepared for the week ahead! (Here is where you do that happy dance!)
Healthy Overnight Oat Muffins
I’ve called this particular muffin creation that because by the weekend, or maybe because of the weekend (wink), we need a health boost. Ginger, cardamom, molasses and oats each and individually, have a gazillion ancient healthy properties in them, so they all went into these scrumptious, not so pretty but loaded with exotic spice flavor, muffins. Enjoy!
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!
Healthy Overnight Oat Muffins
Course: Breakfast, Healthy SnacksCuisine: Mediterranean6
servingsGinger for your tummy, molasses for your bones, oats for just about everything and cardamom, the ancient Mediterranean spice and best friend to your cholesterol, that flavors these muffins in a way you can’t say no to!
Ingredients
Rolled Oats – 1 cup
Milk – 2 cups, your favorite milk
Molasses – 1/2 cup
Eggs – 2
Oil – 1/2 cup, your favorite
Sugar – 1/4 cup
Cardamom – 1 tsp
Ginger – 1 tsp powdered or 1 tbsp fresh
Flour – 1 cup
Baking soda – 1/2 teaspoon
Baking powder – 2 teaspoons
Salt – 1/2 teaspoon
Directions
- Makes 6 jumbo size or 12 regular size.
- Preheat oven to 350
- Mix the oats, milk and molasses together and let sit out overnight.
- Whisk in the eggs and oil.
- Sprinkle the remaining dry ingredients on top and whisk.
- Transfer to prepared muffin tins (either lightly sprayed with oil, or lined with muffin baking papers).
- Bake for 20 minutes or until done.
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.
