Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Cooking from scratch : How to make the perfect organic muffins at home


Good morning. How are you all doing? I hope you are well.

One thing I’ve found that has help in our “going green” project is cooking and baking more from scratch. The reality of going organic with your food is that pre-packaged organic things can be quite costly. But organic base ingredients barely cost a few pennies more sometimes so I decided to do my own recipes more and more.

Now, like most of you, I just don’t have time to sit there night after night and pull out the recipe books. So it was about finding recipes that were easy, quick and flexible so that it could feel like I was making something new all the time with only changing a few ingredients. Well after months of experimenting with muffin recipes, I finally refined my own basic muffin recipe that you can then add whatever you want to and they will always turn out great!

Recipe :

Preheat oven at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).

  • 1 1/2 cups stone ground organic flour
  • 1/2 cup organic whole wheat flour
  • 2/3 cup organic raw sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon organic sea salt
  • 1 organic egg
  • 2 organic egg whites
  • 1/2 cup apple sauce (or sometimes I put pumpkin purée)
  • 1/4 cup organic canola oil
  • OPTIONAL : 1/8 cup organic maple syrup
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 2 tablespoons toasted wheat germ
In a bowl, you whisk together all the WET ingredients (eggs, egg whites, apple sauce or pumpkin purée, oil, syrup (if you choose to use it) and vanilla.

In a larger bowl, you stir together the flours, sugar, spices, fruits and nuts you choose to add, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Then pour in the wet mixture, stir together until it’s all smooth and pour into muffin tins (about ¾ of the way up). Depending on how much fruit and such you add, and the size of your tins, you’ll make between 12 and 16 muffins.

No matter what the ingredients, bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

Flavours :

From here on out, you can put whatever you want in it! I don’t even count the amount per say. Sometimes the muffins will be breadier, sometimes more full-of-fruits, but they always end up being yummy!

Here are some of my favourite combinations :

  • Banana, nut with allspice
  • Carrots and raisins with cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice
  • Cranberries and orange zest
  • Lemon zest and poppy seeds
  • Fresh field berries
  • Apples and spices
  • Dates and walnuts
  • Etc…

TRY THEM ALL and create your own! The great thing about this recipe is that for the initial 20$ of ingredients, you’ll have weeks of fresh muffins on hand and you can always just make them with what you have laying around in the fridge or pantry!

Hope this can help making your homemade life a bit easier and fun!

What are some of your favourite recipes?

4 comments:

Unknown said...

These look great ... and I love the whole idea of "homemade". All it takes is looking at the list of ingredients on the processed variety to know that homemade has to be healthier. And truthfully, homemade tastes so much better!

Your recipe would lend itself well to a vegan diet ... just replace the eggs with and egg replacement, like Ener-G. Thanks for sharing!

As for my favorite recipe ... I posted one of my favorites on my blog last Friday ... Strawberry Shortcake (vegan). Here's the direct link:

http://reducefootprints.blogspot.com/2009/06/vegan-recipe-strawberry-shortcake.html

Take Care!

Small Footprints
http://reducefootprints.blogspot.com

Yanic said...

Small footprint : Hello!
I did see your yummy looking recipe, I bookmarked it for strawberry season here. It will be a great recipe for the 100 mile diet (although I'll probably use eggs because eggs replacers would not be 100 miles. If you do try my muffin recipe with egg replacers, please let me know how they turned out!

Have a great day!

Jenni at My Web of Life said...

Yummy! I can't wait to try these with the kids this weekend!

When I first started buying organic, I wondered why my grocery bill went down rather than up since what I purchase was obviously more expensive. I soon realized that it was because I was making more from scratch rather than buying the pricier pre-packaged organic products like you mentioned.

You really can eat organic and save money as well!

Thanks for a great post!

Yanic said...

oicned : Thank you! That is very nice of you. I look forward to exploring your sites more. I see from your profile you have quite a few! I'll make sure and drop by!

Jenni :

I hope they turned out good. What combination did you try?

The thing we are most looking forward to is trying to make our own breads. I think does will be our crowning glory!