muffins

Something to Read: Foodie Babies Wear Bibs

~ wellfedemily ~ Leave a comment

30days

This post is a bit like cheating. I’m telling you about the book so I can share a recipe for muffins, which I feed to my non-foodie baby. I posted a photo of them to Instagram yesterday and someone asked for the recipe, so, since the recipe is for something I feed Toddler, why not also write about a book I read to Toddler as well? It’s a bit of a stretch, sure, but these are pretty good muffins.

My copy of Foodie Babies Wear Bibs was a gift at a baby shower thrown by my colleagues at my old job at the university. At the time, I was expecting to spend much of my maternity leave introducing exciting flavours to a little boy who would surely be thrilled by each and every one. I ended up with a toddler who is not even interested in flavours except the flavours that store-bought pudding comes in, and to be honest I’m not even sure where he discovered store-bought pudding, so my expectations have shifted somewhat. When I got my wisdom teeth out last week, Nick bought me a whole bunch of pudding; what’s left over has been tempting Toddler since.

As I mentioned in another post, he will eat a muffin.

He actually really likes Foodie Babies Wear Bibs, and will enthusiastically pretend-eat any and all food, insects or animals off the pages of his books. He has a Cookie Monster book where Cookie Monster makes and serves a turkey dinner – Toddler pretend-gobbles it right up! Real turkey is, of course, an insult.

Gobble gobble

I guess liking (and eating?) books counts for something, so I shouldn’t complain. So, muffins. I made a dozen yesterday and only have five left, so they must be pretty good (though I’ll admit I did break my own no-white-flour-rule). These are made with pear sauce, as I made and canned a ton of it last September, but you could make these with applesauce and they’d be just fine. I also used maple extract to boost the mapley taste, but if you don’t have that, vanilla will do fine.

And if you need a baby shower gift, pick up a copy of Foodie Babies Wear Bibs; just warn the mum-to-be to never speak her desire for a well-rounded eater out loud because she’ll jinx it.

Mmmuffins!

Bran Muffins

(Makes 12.)

  • 1 cup wheat bran
  • 1 cup white flour
  • 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1 tbsp. ground flax seed
  • 2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 1/2 cups pear sauce or applesauce
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
  • 1/4 cup maple syrup
  • 6 tbsp. melted butter
  • 1 tsp. maple or vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 400°F. Grease your muffin tins, or use paper liners which I prefer since my muffin pan is on its last legs. If you can find them on sale, the parchment liners are great and peel off easily.

Combine your wheat bran, flours, flax, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Whisk together. Set aside.

In another large bowl, whisk together pear or applesauce, eggs, sugar, and maple syrup. Add butter and maple or vanilla extract, and whisk again.

Stir your dry ingredients into your wet ingredients until your dry ingredients are just moistened.

Spoon your batter equally into your 12 muffin cups. Don’t level the batter off it appears uneven; the muffins will sort themselves out in the oven.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, then open the oven, turn the pan around, close the oven door, and bake for another 8 to 10 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. 16 minutes was perfect for my oven.

When the muffins are ready, remove them from the pan onto a wire rack and let them cool. Once fully cooled, you can freeze these in a container with a tight-fitting lid for about a month; they’ll store in a container on the counter for a week otherwise.

Eat them buttered, with a good book. Pants optional.

Muffin, book.

 

Spaghetti squash muffins.

~ wellfedemily ~ 7 Comments

spaghetti squash muffins

I make a lot of muffins.

Not on purpose, really; I have a picky eater and more produce than I know what to do with and I’ve got to get something that grows into him somehow and he’ll eat baked goods. All the baked goods. So, over the past year or so, I have honed my muffin-making prowess to the point where I believe I could now fill a book with deceptively healthy muffin recipes. When did I get so dull?

If it makes me seem any cooler, I am currently drinking a vodka and soda out of a topless sippy cup because we have a ran-out-of-clean-dishes situation.

Vodka. Topless. There you go, there’s some good stuff, right?

And we have reached that part of the year where all my good intentions in June have manifested in abundance come late-September, and now we’re into October and I have to do something with all the squash. “Good intentions” might be the wrong way to put it – I was a little more delusional than well-intended, I think, because while I love spaghetti squash, I don’t love having to eat a dozen of them all at once, but I never think about that when I’m enthusiastically thumbing seeds into the ground. So, between what grew in the garden and what I couldn’t resist at the farmer’s market, I am forced to get creative.

One does not simply feed a picky eater stringy bits of yellow squash. No.

Fortunately, I’m acing muffins these days and you can put spaghetti squash in muffins. You can. And it’s pretty good.

This recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of cooked spaghetti squash; most of the time, that’s one whole spaghetti squash. If you’re a little short, just add a bit of applesauce to make up the difference.

Spaghetti squash muffins

  • 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup rolled oats (not instant or quick-cooking)
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1 tbsp. flax seed
  • 2 tsp. baking soda
  • 2 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp. Kosher salt
  • 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
  • 1/2 tsp. ground cloves
  • 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
  • 1 1/2 cups cooked and drained spaghetti squash
  • 1 cup grapeseed or other neutral-tasting oil
  • 4 large eggs, beaten
  • 1 tsp. vanilla or maple extract
  • 1 cup chopped walnuts

Cook your spaghetti squash. There are a bunch of ways you can do this – I usually just throw the whole thing into a 400-degree oven and let it go until it’s soft, but that’s not terribly helpful. You can also microwave it, which is faster. Check this list out, and cook it however you like; just be sure to discard the seeds and scrape the flesh into a colander in the sink to drain it; drain for about 15 minutes, after which the squash should be cool enough to work with.

Preheat your oven to 350°F. If you have two muffin pans, you are very lucky – grease them both, or line the little cups with whatever kind of liner you like. I’m cheap, so one muffin pan plus grease it is.

In a large bowl, combine your flours, oats, sugars, flax, baking soda, spices, and salt. Mix well.

In another bowl, mix squash, oil, eggs, and extract. Fold into your dry ingredients until they are just moistened; add your walnuts and fold again.

Spoon your batter into muffin tins until each muffin cup is about three-quarters full. You should get between 21 and 24 muffins.

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Whoever you’re deceiving with these will never notice that these are kind of good for them, I promise.

Picky.