Eggless Banana Nut Muffin

Its been a long time since I baked a muffin. I have been baking this eggless version of the simple banana muffin for quite sometime now, but I got to get the pictures only this time. Flax seeds are an excellent substitute for egg in baking recipes especially turns out well with Muffins or Quick bread recipes. 
Basic recipe for this muffin is from Saffron Hut.

Ingredients:
3 large ripe bananas
1/3 cup butter, at room temperature
1 and 1/2 cup Flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp Baking soda
1 tblsp Flax seeds + 3tblsp Water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup chopped walnuts


Method:
Preheat the Oven to 375F
Soak the Flax meal with the 3 tblsp of water, allow it to sit for 10 min.
Roast the walnuts slightly in a dry pan and then chop coarsely.
Peel and mash the bananas using the back of a fork in a small bowl.
Combine the butter and sugar in a bowl and beat till they become creamy.
Sift the Flour, baking powder and baking soda together in a separate bowl.


To the butter and sugar mixture add the flax meal mixture and vanilla extract and beat well to combine.
Now add the flour mixture in batches and mix gently to combine, until no visible streaks of flour left. Its okay if  the mixture is a little lumpy.
Fold in the mashed banana and the chopped walnuts.
Spoon the mixture into the muffin pans lined with paper cups.
Bake for 15-18 mins.


Make 12 Muffins.

Wish You all a very happy and relaxing long weekend:)

Weekend Baking - Blueberry Muffin.

My Son has taken a sudden liking towards blueberries. Few months back he always said 'no' to this wonder fruit, but now he demands  blueberries in everything even in dosai's. I am so surprised to see his taste bud change in such a short time. So nowadays I always make sure to pick up a box of blueberries during my weekend shopping. I am not a big fan of blueberry muffin , but since I had some fresh fruit in the refrigerator wanted to give this recipe a try and am so glad I did, it turned out soft and delicious, we all loved it .

This is also a low calorie recipe with oil and yogurt.

Recipe source: Joy Of Baking

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar

1 cup blueberries

1/4 cup canola oil

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup yogurt

1 egg (slightly beaten)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:

Preheat the oven to 190F

Prepare the muffin tins with paper liners.

Sift the dry ingredients , the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt to a medium bowl.

Add the oil and yogurt in a large bowl and beat well with a whisk.

Add in the slightly beaten egg, vanilla extract and mix well.

Now add the flour mixture and mix gently to incorporate. Do not overmix.

It is ok to have small lumps. Over mixing will lead to tough muffins.

Gently fold in the blueberries. Spoon the batter in to the prepared pan. 

Bake for 16- 20 mins or until the toothpick inserted in the center come clean.
Cool in the pan for 5 mins before removing and cooling on a wire rack.
Makes about 12 muffins.

Note: If using frozen berries, toss them in about a 2 tablespoon of flour from the flour mixture and then add to the muffin mix.

The sweetness was on the milder side for this recipe, so if you want a sweeter muffins increase the sugar to 3/4 cup.

Yummy Vanilla Cupcakes

Iam back from a month long break...We had three good weeks of vacation in India, and then back here I had to prepare for my kids second birthday.It went on very well last week, though hard to believe that my tiny one is growing so fast.Will post the pictures of the menu in the next post.But before that I wanted to publish this post that was sitting in my drafts for a long time.The auto scheduler didnt work for me !!!

Have tried several recipes for vanilla cupcakes from diferent sources, but didnt quite turn out well. So I stopped making them for a while until I saw this recipe from "Passionate about baking" . Made it thrice since then , and every time it baked beautifully and was yummy.

Without taking much of your time here is the recipe:

I didnt make any changes to the original recipe, just made them with large muffin pan instead of the mini ones. Made 12 cupcakes.

Source: Passionate about Baking

Ingredients:

Flour – 2 cups

Baking Powder – 2 tsp

Salt – ½ tsp

Butter – ½ cup

Sugar 1 ¼ cup

Eggs – 2

Milk – 1 cup

Vanilla Essence – 1 tsp

Method:
Preheat the oven to 190deg C.
Grease well muffin trays.
Sift together flour + baking powder + salt 3 times. Keep aside.
Cream the butter and sugar well on high speed until light and fluffy.
Beat in vanilla essence, followed by eggs beaten in 1 by 1.
Now beat in flour and milk alternatively till well incorporated.
Put about a tsp full in each muffin casing, about ¾ full, as it will rise.
Bake at 190deg C for 10-15 mins till golden brown.
Remove immediately and cool on racks.

Apple cinnamon muffins

I had bookmarked this recipe from Baking bites long back but didnt get to it.Whenever I think of trying this recipe either I will be short of apples or the apples will not be fresh.Since Iam travelling to India on a three weeks vacation Iam planning my menu everyday such that no vegetables or fruits are left out in the refrigerator.Veggies I can manage, but fruits ! with only three days left there is a lot of fruit (peaches,cherries, pears, apples)to be finished thanks to the visit to the farmers market..So dont be surprised if there is an other post on something with peaches.(ya I have a bookmarked recipe of peaches too..)

I didnt use the recipe as such, made a few changes like avoided eggs and used milk instead of buttermilk.I also used whole wheat pastry flour.The result was soft moist and delicious muffins.

Recipe adapted from Baking Bites

Ingredients
2 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground ginger

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp butter, melted and cooled

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract ( I used vanilla sugar)

1 cup milk

2 cups diced apple

3 tbsp coarse sugar

1/2 tsp ground cinnomon

Method

Preheat oven to 375F (190C). Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and spices.

In a large bowl, whisk together brown sugar , melted butter, vegetable oil and vanilla.

Working in two or three additions, alternately stir in flour mixture and milk, ending with an addition of flour and mixing only until no streaks of flour remain visible in the batter.

Stir in diced apple.Divide batter evenly into prepared muffin cups filling each to the top, or slightly over.

In a small bowl, stir together coarse sugar and additional 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon.

Sprinkle generously over muffins.Bake for 15-18 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean and the top springs back when lightly pressed.

Cool muffins on a wire rack.

Mine made 9 large Muffins.



The theme for this month's Think Spice event hosted by Sunita herself being "Spiced sweet treat" these gorgeous Apple Muffins spiced with cinnamon and ginger makes their way to the event.



Sending these healthy muffins to the "Show me your muffins " event by Divya at Dil-se

Dates and Walnuts Muffins

Wanted to bake something healthy and filling for our weekend trip to Paris last weekend.When I started browsing, I came across Aparna's post on Dates muffin and I was quite satisfied with the recipe as all the ingredients mentioned were in my pantry and dates sounded more healthy and the combination with walnuts suited my taste.

Muffins are easy to pack and carry too.

I had a type of whole wheat flour with the bran, so I decided to replace the all purpose flour and the wheat germ with WWF and increased the amout of oil by a tablespoon.

The result was a delicious and sweet smelling muffins. The smell of the wwf doesnt seem to bother my toddler and the muffins kept him going during that tiresome weekend.

Ingredients:

2 cup whole wheat flour

¾ cup light brown sugar

2 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

½ cup dates, deseeded and chopped finely

½ cup walnuts

1 cup milk

4 tbsp oil

1 tsp vanilla essence

Method:

Chop the the dates and walnuts into smaller pieces. Set the oven to 200C.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Put all the wet ingredients in another bowl and mix well.

Now pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones and fold so that everything is just mixed.

If the batter is over-mixed, the muffins will not be soft and springy in texture.

Spoon the batter into greased muffin cups about 2/3 full.

Bake for about 15 to 2o minutes.Mine baked for 25 mins probably because of the wholewheat.Cool slightly, remove to a rack.

I made 10 as my muffin cups are slightly on the larger side.

Will bake these often from now on, probably will add some orange juice next time as suggested by Madhuram. Iam sending these muffins to her 'Whole Grain Baking - whole wheat ' event.

Strawberry Cake and Muffins

It was raining strawberries at home last week. My toddler just started eating strawberries and he likes it a lot even if its soar.Just the fact that my son has started a liking towards these pinkish beauties made my husband go for loads of them.Yes, he brought home a whole bag of it.

The best part of it is that he didnt know that strawberries doesnt have a longer life even if its refrigerated. So two days later I started browsing for some recipes to use the left over fruit, and came across two wonderful recipes.

The first one was Aparna's Strawberry muffin.

The recipe was so simple I immediatly baked them. As she mentioned in her post I added some sugar to the berries before mixing as mine was very sour.But the muffin tasted really good with no trace of the sourness.

The next one was a Strawberry spring cake from Asha's Foodie's hope.

This recipe was already book marked by me when she posted it last month, waiting for some neglected strawberries, and so baked that wonderful soft cake the next day.

Over all the recipes were so good and welcomed by all , that I baked them twice.

Iam posting the recipes here for keepsake:

Strawberry Muffins:

Ingredients:

1 cup all purpose flour

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar*

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup chopped (not too fine) Strawberries

1/2 cup milk

1/4 cup oil

1 egg (or flax seed substitute**)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:

Put the flours, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl and whisk lightly to mix well.

Add the strawberries to the flour mixture and mix to ensure they are well coated with flour.

In another bowl, lightly beat the egg/ flax seed substitute, vanilla extract, milk and oil together. Add this to the strawberry-flour mixture and gently mix together, in a folding motion, about 4 or 5 times. Do not over stir, or the texture of your muffins will suffer.

The batter will be lumpy and slightly floury.

Grease the muffin tins/ cups and divide the batter equally between them, so that each one is about 2/3rds full.

Bake at 180C for about 25 minutes till the muffins are done and lightly golden brown on top.

Cool for 10 minutes, unmould them and cool completely on a rack. This recipe makes 8 muffins.

Note : I used whole wheat flour completly for this recipe, and somehow my batter become a little thin , but my muffins came out just fine.

Strawberry cake

:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup ( 1 stick) softened butter,

2 eggs,

1 cup regular white sugar,

1 tsp vanilla essence,

1 3/4 cups plain flour,

1/8 tsp salt,

2 tsp baking powder,

2/3 cup fresh red ripened Strawberries pureed.

Method:

Preheat oven to 350F/190C.

Spray cake pan with no-stick oil or butter well and keep aside.

In a mixer bowl, beat the sugar and butter first until fluffy.

Add in the eggs,mix. Then add in the vanilla.

Sift flour and baking powder, add to the creamed butter mixture and mix again gently on low speed until everything comes together.

Now, stir in the strawberry puree, beat until batter is well mixed and evenly pink.

Pour into the prepared pan, tap on the kitchen counter to top get the bubbles out.

Bake for about 35 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven or until golden and skewer comes out clean form the center.

Take it out of the oven, let it sit for 5mins. Invert gently on the cooling rack.

When cool, sprinkle powdered sugar on top to serve or you can use Vanilla icing.

I served it with whipped cream.It was delicious.

Hence ended my starwberry saga for this season and No more for this year ! :)

Sending these Muffins and Cake to 'The Strawberry Feast' hosted by Happy Cook at 'My Kitchen Treasures'

Eggless Carrot Raisin/Walnut Muffins

I got this receipe long time back from the back of whole wheat flour packet, but didnt get the time or ingredients together to make this one.Today being Tamil New year, I wanted to make something sweet, but my hubby said no to the usual Payasam as he is cutting down on sugar. So I decided to make the long pending carrot mufins..which I thought would be a treat for the New Year as well as the weekend. Afterall we should eat what we enjoy the most right !!!!

Happy Tamil New Year Everyone...Enjoy.
Here is the receipe

Ingredients:
2 cups of shredded carrot
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup brown sugar/white sugar
5tbl sp butter
1 cup milk
1 cup raisins
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnomon

Note:
You can substitute whole wheat flour with white flour if you dont like the smell of whole wheat.. I just wanted to make it more nutritious.
You can also add an egg, and reduce the amount of milk to half.
You can also add walnuts instead of raisins or both.

Method:
Preheat the oven to 350F .
Sieve the flour, baking powder, soda and cinnomon two ot three times.
Beat buter and sugar together until frothy , t0 this add the dry ingredients and the milk alternatively in small batches , end with the dry ingredients. Mix slowly till no traces of flour is found. The mix should be thick.Now add the carrots and raisins and fold in the mixture two or three times. Spoon the mixture into mufin cups and bake for 20-25 mins. A tooth pick inserted at the center should come in clean.
Serve warm with a cup of Tea!!

Updated on 2nd November 2009
Here are some recent pictures of these muffins .This time I added walnuts instead of raisins.