As I was editing the above and below photos of the Banana All-Bran Muffins I recently made for my Dad, I started to feel strangely emotional.
Mind you, I wasn’t getting teary over the muffins themselves. Sure, they’re deliciously soft-yet-hearty-and-healthy treats packed with fibrelicious All-Bran Fibre Toppers and sweet ripe bananas, but they’re not quite worth getting misty-eyed over.
My Dad, on the other hand, is well worth a bit of overflowing gratitude and happiness. Whether we’re standing in the kitchen chatting as he makes us cups of tea or it’s me in the kitchen preparing coffee and chocolate for our weekend Downton Abbey viewings (Mum included, of course); whether he’s texting me encouragement to take a great-wide-soaring leap despite the inherent risks, or I’m standing in the garage wondering if he’ll ever finish the doll’s house he started building when I was knee-high to a grasshopper… my Dad is always there, always supportive, and always someone I’m proud to know.
Plus, as you can see in the photo below, sometimes Dad and I match our outfits to each other’s eye colours. Is that the sign of a wonderful father-daughter relationship or what?
A few weeks ago, Nuffnang ran an ad for Kellogg’s new All-Bran Fibre Toppers on the side of my blog. My Dad clicked on the ad, and then sent me an email asking if I could make him the Banana All-Bran Fibre Toppers Muffins the ad had led him to. I may or may not have clapped at the screen when I saw this email, for I’m always nudging Mum and Dad to let me know what and when I can bake for them.
You see, baking treats for my parents makes me feel better about using their washing machine every weekend.
Yep, I’m that daughter. But I swear, they love knowing they’ll get to experience the glory of my company at least once a week. Right, Mum and Dad? Right?
As I didn’t change the muffin recipe substantially, I shan’t reprint it here. Food blogger ethics and all that jazz! For the recipe, please see Fuss Free Cooking.
As a Gemini, I apparently have the right to change my mind at a moment’s notice. I can suddenly enjoy something I’ve previously disliked. For example: yoghurt.
In my defense, I still detest the majority of yoghurts available in supermarkets (thin-runny-mucus-like-gloopy-overly-sweetened travesties). I once found myself lured by a Fat-Free No Sugar Cheesecake-Flavoured yoghurt, and I’m almost certain a fairy lost its wings the moment I peeled back the plastic lid. I ate it, because I’d paid for it, but that was a sad day in the life of Hannah. (See also: canned chicken.)
However, this is not a post about disgusting yoghurt. This is a post about Chobani, the thick, creamy, enjoyable yoghurt I used to buy in America (I particularly liked the pomegranate flavour, which sadly isn’t sold here).
I was very kindly sent a box of 14 Chobani yoghurts after expressing excitement on Twitter about their arrival in Australia. And then I was sent another 14 when I mentioned offhand that I’d forgotten to try baking with them. (The Chobani folk are nothing if not passionate about their yoghurt and determined that we Australians enjoy it too.) Here are my thoughts on Chobani’s flavoured yoghurts:
Strawberry 0%: Pleasant flavour, generous fruit swirl. I like that none of Chobani’s flavours are sickly-sweet. Found myself dreaming of a raspberry flavour though.
Blueberry 0%: Not my favourite. I found the flavour a bit watery, and put this down to it being fat-free. I liked it best when mixed with cacao nibs or desiccated coconut (yay fat!).
Peach 0%: Surprisingly, I found the Peach [also 0% fat] Chobani richer in flavour than its blueberry cousin, and therefore enjoyed it more.
Pineapple 2%: My equal favourite; I really like the tanginess. It also seemed thicker somehow. I always mix this flavour with cinnamon, and would happily buy it again.
Mango 2%: Liked this one in a smoothies and when topped with muesli or granola.
Vanilla 0%: Can’t lie, I didn’t like this at all. The vanilla tasted medicinal and chemically, and I couldn’t eat it straight. However, I did use it to make the below Vanilla Craisin Muffins, and they turned out really nicely. So my advice: bake with the Vanilla if you know what’s good for you.
Passionfruit 2%: My other equal favourite. Really loved the rich creamy yoghurt mixed with vibrant tangy passionfruit. Would buy this again, and am half-planning to invent passionfruit cornbread with it. Is that weird?
Overall, I’m thrilled that there’s a new Greek-style thick yoghurt in Australia, and I’ll happily buy the passionfruit and pineapple flavours in future. Sure, not every flavour is to my taste, but that’s to be expected with anything, really.
And hey, if I can bake semi-healthy muffin deliciousness with the flavours that don’t float my boat on their own, then I’m one happy calcium-filled girl.
Preheat oven to 180°C (375°F) and line a standard muffin tray with cases. In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, sugar, baking powder and soda, spices, salt, and craisins.
In another bowl, whisk together the egg, oil, vanilla, yoghurt, and milk.
Add the yoghurt mixture to to the dry ingredients and stir until well combined. This is a very thick batter so you’re probably going to have to stir a lot, thereby defying the whole “mix muffins lightly” mantra bestowed upon us by Ye Olde Bakers of Ye Olde Times Ye Olde Olde. These are hearty muffins. Go with it.
Fill the lined muffins cases with batter and bake for around 18 minutes, until a skewer stuck in the centre comes out clean.
Feed to family, work colleagues, and yo’ own fine self.
* I added the milk because, without it, there wasn’t enough liquid to turn the dry ingredients into a batter. Even with the milk, the batter was almost scone-like in density, but hey, it worked in the end. Just don’t expect a thin runny batter, okay? Okay. We’re cool.
When other kids were playing team sports after school, I was enmeshed in music. Piano lessons, music theory classes, clarinet lessons, clarinet ensemble, piano practice, clarinet practice, eisteddfods, music festivals. I’d also sing to my mum as she played chauffeur, although it wasn’t until last year that I took up singing in a less haphazard way.
A large portion of my childhood memories relate to music. The friends I made through clarinet, the first piano teacher who scared the willies out of me and the second piano teacher who became a dear friend. The nauseating butterflies before piano and clarinet exams (less so theory exams), and the giddiness afterwards when I got to call my grandparents and dad and tell them that, thank heavens, I hadn’t “failed” by getting less than top marks. (But this isn’t the place to talk about ridiculous over-achieving perfectionist tendencies.)
I remember once, after a piano exam, Mum and I stopped at a cafe to celebrate my results with something sweet. I remember standing at the bakery case and pointing to an individual pecan pie, drawn in by its golden-brown nuts bathed in a glossy sugar syrup.
I remember not liking the pecan pie at all. It was too cloying and too one-note, and the pastry base was stodgy, crumbling, and lacking in flavour. Yet despite this disappointment, I held out hope for one day finding a pecan pie that tasted like I dreamed it would.
These Coconut Pecan Pie Muffins aren’t a true pecan pie, but by golly gee whiz willikins! They are rich and sweet and nutty and cinnamon-tinted and glorious and definitely a dessert-muffin rather than a breakfast-muffin which is always a good thing.
The dessert-aspect is why I ate most of these muffins warmed up in the microwave with a hearty scoop of Vanilla So Good soy ice cream. (Well, I also ate them this way because following the original recipe’s baking time resulted in uncooked-at-the-bottom muffins that I wasn’t comfortable taking to work as per my original plan and therefore had to warm up to cook a little bit more to eat all by myself, but shhhhh. We shan’t speak of that.)
My first pecan pie experience may have made my heart cry, but these gluten-free and dairy-free Coconut Pecan Pie muffins taste like what I imagine the acme of pecan pies would taste like. Except better, because of the crackly top, moist, soft, nut- and coconut-studded crumb, and dairy-free ice cream.
Plus, I didn’t have to steel myself against the stern eyes of an AMEB examiner to get to these muffins. That’s a win right there.
Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free Coconut Pecan Pie Muffins
Adapted from Tasty Kitchen
Makes 8 (next time I might try making 10-12 smaller muffins)
1 cup (220g) packed brown sugar
1/2 cup (75g) gluten-free flour (I used Orgran. Normal flour will also work.)
3/4 cup (80g) chopped pecans
1/3 cup (35g) shredded/desiccated coconut
1 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cups softened dairy-free spread or butter (I used Nuttelex)
2 eggs, beaten
Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F). Grease and/or line a muffin pan.
In a medium bowl, stir together the sugar, gluten-free flour, pecans, coconut, and cinnamon.
In a separate bowl, beat the Nuttelex and eggs together until smooth. (I recommend using hand-held electric beaters for this. I started out with my arm and a whisk, and That. Was. Stupid.)
Stir in the dry ingredients until just combined. Spoon the batter into the prepared cups until they’re about 2/3rds full. (You may want to make more than 8; I should have, in retrospect.)
Bake muffins for 25-35 minutes*, until cooked through. Leave muffins in tins for 5 minutes, then cool on a wire rack.
* Yes, I know this is a huge time difference, but I baked mine for about 28 minutes and they were, as mentioned above, still very gooey (read: uncooked) at the bottom. Depending on your oven and whether you make 8, 10, or 12 muffins, you may want to cover the tops with foil and bake them for longer. I will confidently state, however, that these coconut pecan pie muffins are incredibly delicious even when not entirely cooked through.
Have you entered my giveaway for a Baked and Delicious Magazine subscription yet? The magazine comes with silicone bakeware and four subscriber gifts (just for you), so you probably want to enter, don’t you? Yes you do, yes you do… *in a sing-song cajoling voice*
What you see before you is the muffins I hinted at in the above giveaway post: my Mixed Berry and Maple Syrup Muffins. Studded with a myriad of jewel-like berries melting into a softly maple-scented crumb, these muffins are perfect for breaking up seemingly-endless workdays, for delivering to your Tasmanian aunt who has arrived to assist your grandparents upon their return from hospital, and as a reminder that grey days won’t last forever.
At this very precise exact moment in time, I would very much like to be packing these muffins into a picnic basket adorned with glitter glue, googly eyes, and gold stars. I would like to be picking up that picnic basket and setting it before me on my chestnut-coloured horse (I shall call him Aristaeus, because who wouldn’t want their horse to be the god of bee-keeping and cheese-making?).
I would like to be tugging down my polka-dot gingham dress because I Am A Lady even when riding bareback, and I would like to be meeting up with several of my favourite friends for an afternoon of sipping home-made lemonade spiked with ginger (a bit like the ginger-water that Ma sent to Laura and Pa in the fields in The Long Winter, so they could drink as much as they wanted in the heat without getting sick), nibbling on these muffins, lying on the grass with the sun on our faces, and having absolutely no anxieties pressing down, ever, on our throats as we talked.
But, for the minute, I’ll have to settle for simply eating these muffins. Or muffins like them. Because I gave all twelve of these delights away to worthier folk, and oh! I do so hope they liked them.
Mixed Berry Maple Syrup Muffins
1 3/4 cups plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
2/3 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup milk
90g butter, melted
1 cup frozen mixed berries (mine included blueberries, red currant boysenberries, and raspberries)
1. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F) and grease or line 12 muffin cups (if you’re using silicone muffin cases from Baked and Delicious, you can skip the greasing/lining).
2. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
3. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, maple syrup, milk and melted butter. Add this to the dry ingredients and stir gently until just combined (remember, as is always the case with muffins, leaving the batter a bit lumpy is good). Fold in the frozen berries.
4. Spoon the batter into the muffin cups and bake until golden brown, 20-25 minutes (check at the 20 minute mark, if not before. The extent of the frozen-ness of your berries can impact substantially on the baking time).
5. Embrace the beauty that is maple syrup. Forever and ever amen.
Question Time: What are you daydreaming about today?
Happy 91st birthday to my wonderful, thoughtful, brave, kind, and ever-supportive Grandpa! Words cannot express how much I treasure our afternoons playing Crib together, your smile and love of literature, our mutual distaste for casseroles containing squidgy fruits, and the way you make me feel cherished, just the way I am.
I’ll never forget waking up to breakfasts of hot buttered toast, cut into quarters, during school holidays, nor the endless stash of Magnums in your Turramurra garage freezer. I also particularly appreciate the fact that you were a far more generous Tooth Fairy than my parents ever were.
I felt happy, yesterday morning, folding diced apple into sweet batter with the knowledge that the muffins were destined to be your birthday present. I hummed as I scattered the buttery streusel topping evenly over the muffin tin, thinking of how I was a mere hour away from presenting you with a platter of still-warm-high-topped apple and cinnamon muffins. I smiled as I slid the tin into the warm oven.
And then the stupid batter went PHLOOMP all over the place in an extremely ungainly fashion, and all my mental images of Perfect Pretty Golden Domed Creations For My Grandpa disappeared.
See? See the PHLOOMPING? Struesel everywhere! PHLOOMPED streusel!
And then I, erm, couldn’t get the muffins out of the tin. At all. Let this be a lesson to you all: too much tin-greasing is never enough.
Happy 91st birthday Grandpa! I hope you enjoyed the bonus gift of a tin with your muffins!
(Oh, just so you know, my mother [your daughter] will probably be wanting her tin back eventually. I only hope you’re able to spoon the muffins out first…)
3 Granny Smith apples, cored and chopped into small cubes
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon, divided (1 tsp for the batter, and 1/2 tsp to toss with the apples)
Preheat oven to 180°C/350°F. Line tins with paper cases (don’t do what I did and simply rely on heavily greasing the tin. Go with the paper cases).
For the streusel: Mix all ingredients together with your fingers (for the extremely messy option) or a food processor (for the extra cleaning option). Leave to rest in fridge while you mix the muffin batter.
In a medium sized bowl, mix together the flour, brown sugar, baking powder and 1 tsp cinnamon. In a larger bowl, whisk together the milk, eggs, butter, and vanilla extract.
Pour the dry ingredients into the wet and stir until just combined, then gently fold in the apple tossed with 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Remember, lumps are good in muffin batter but bad in mattresses. Unless, of course, someone is hiding inside the mattress during a game of hide-and-seek.
Spoon the batter into muffin tins, and top with the streusel mixture. Bake for 25-30 minutes until cooked through. If you’re lucky, remove your muffins from the tin. Sigh. Makes 12 muffins (although I personally made nine because a running-out-of-flour problem led to a 25% reduction in ingredients).
Question Time: What lovely memories do you have of your grandfather/s?
As I was editing the above and below photos of the Banana All-Bran Muffins I recently made for my Dad, I started to feel strangely emotional.
My Dad, on the other hand, is well worth a bit of overflowing gratitude and happiness. Whether we’re standing in the kitchen chatting as he makes us cups of tea or it’s me in the kitchen preparing coffee and chocolate for our weekend Downton Abbey viewings (Mum included, of course); whether he’s texting me encouragement to take a great-wide-soaring leap despite the inherent risks, or I’m standing in the garage wondering if he’ll ever finish the doll’s house he started building when I was knee-high to a grasshopper… my Dad is always there, always supportive, and always someone I’m proud to know.
As I didn’t change the muffin recipe substantially, I shan’t reprint it here. Food blogger ethics and all that jazz! For the recipe, please see Fuss Free Cooking.
