These healthy Applesauce Muffins are perfect for busy mornings. Their cream cheese frosting makes you feel like you’re eating cake for breakfast!
…
Top 10 in 2014
Happy 2015!
Almost.
Vegas and I escaped to Lake Tahoe for NYE and some other shenanigans, so today’s WIAW post is a look back on the top posts of 2014.
Thank you to everyone for helping make 2014 one of the best yet. I’ve loved making new friends, learning a lot, and eating a TON of (strange but) good food.
Without further adieu, here are the top 10 posts you thought were good (and likely a little strange) in 2014.
Top 10 in 2014
10. 3 Surprisingly Quick Meals
Here are three meals that I threw together quickly when what I had on hand. They look fancy-ish, but they were incredibly easy (and fun) to make: Stuffed French Toast Egg Wrap, Squachos (nachos… but with squash), and a Pressed Bison Wrap….
Apple Carrot Protein Muffins [Recipe]
I’m not big on repeats.
There are too many new things to try!
A new twist on an old recipe seems acceptable though. Especially when you don’t have much else in your fridge! I’ve been meaning to make my Apple Carrot Muffins for a while, actually. They were really good, and I remembered that the originals led to a great race time. A time I could never hit 3.5 years later…
Saturday morning had a similar results though! I ate 2 of the version 2.0 Apple Carrot Protein Muffins before heading to the gym and PR’d a couple of tricep exercises on sleepy, rainy morning.
…
Banana Chocolate Chip Protein Muffins
Elvis had it right.
Except for the whole dying on the toilet thing…
The King was known for banana and peanut butter sandwiches. And music, of course. That classic combo has been one of my favorites for years. My mom used to make those sandwiches for us… with mayonnaise. #strangebutgood from an early age!
I left the mayo out of these muffins, but added chocolate. They also contain protein. Probably not strange to many of you, but my co-worker called me a “nut bag.”
(She calls me this In an affectionate way – she’s my tater tot-eating work wife. Sometimes I steal a tot, but she never steals my food. I win!)
Anyway, eat these. The bananas, Greek yogurt, and nut butter give these a rich but not-too-sweet taste and a velvet-like texture.
Once you pop, you can’t stop.
Banana Chocolate Chip Protein Muffins
- 1 large ripe banana, mashed
- 2 T Xylitol (or other sweetener)
- 1/4 C plain Greek yogurt
- 2 egg whites (6 T)
- 3 T unsweetened almond milk
- 1/4 C nut butter (I used Onnit Cashew Walnut Butter)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 T melted coconut oil
- 1/4 C flour (I used spelt)
- 2 scoops (62g) vanilla protein powder (I used Growing Naturals Rice Protein)
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 C chocolate (or carob) chips
In a large bowl, add banana, sugar, yogurt, egg whites, milk, nut butter, vanilla, and coconut oil in a bowl and whisk together until combined.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
Add the dry to wet ingredients and stir together until just combined.
Fold in chocolate chips.
Pour batter into greased muffin tins. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes, or until toothpick come out clean.
Makes 10 muffins.
Approximate Nutritionals (per muffin): 131 calories, 5.8g fat, 38.6g sodium, 12.2g carbohydrates, 2.2g fiber, 2.9g sugar, 8.6g protein
How have you enjoyed making co-workers, friends, or family stare with strange but good creations this week? The link up rules can be found here or by clicking on “Strange But Good” in the menu bar above. In short, I want to see what concoctions have earned you weird looks from co-workers, family and friends! Post your Strange But Good creations, grab the logo below for your blog, and link up here.
Remember to use #strangebutgood in any Tweets and Instagrams of your creations. 🙂
***
Now I have “Love Me Tender” stuck in my head.
Are you a banana and peanut butter fan?
What’s your favorite Elvis song?
Strange But Good: Sriracha Veggie Muffins
Sriracha and I have a long relationship.
Second only to my relationship with my hair stylist.
Spicy is a food group all its own in my house. I put Sriracha or some sort of heat source on nearly everything. Even my chocolate sauce is “Mexican” with the addition of cayenne. Why should muffins be any different?
If adding Sriracha to muffins isn’t strange enough, I also added veggies. I choose red peppers, zucchini, and shiitake mushrooms to compliment the Vietnamese feels of the Sriracha. You can easily change it up with your favorites.
This spicy little number is also low carb thanks to coconut flour. I also added stay-powder with healthy amount of cottage cheese and eggs to amp up the protein.
Heat up your morning (or your evening) with a spicy little number. They’re good from the freezer too – just pop it in the microwave ~30 seconds to thaw.
It may sound strange, but it’s good.
[Tweet “Sriracha and veggies… in a muffin?! These are #strangebutgood!”]
Sriracha Veggie Muffins
Prep Time: 20 mins
Cook Time: 20-25 mins
Keywords: bake saute snack bread gluten-free low-carb low-sodium low-sugar nut-free soy-free sugar-free vegetarian coconut flour cottage cheese egg egg whites Asian
Ingredients (12 muffins)
- 1 small red pepper, diced
- 1 C cauliflower, chopped
- 1 C shiitake mushrooms, sliced
- 1/2 C zucchini, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/2 C spelt flour
- 1/4 C coconut flour
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- 1/2 tsp onion powder
- 1/4 tsp sodium-free baking powder
- 1/2 C no-salt cottage cheese
- 2 eggs
- 1.5 C egg whites
- 1 T sriracha
Instructions
Preheat oven to 375. Coat a muffin tin with cooking spray.
Heat pan over medium-high heat and coat with cooking spray. Saute veggies until tender. Set aside.
Meanwhile, mix together dry ingredients in a large bowl. Stir in wet ingredients. Lastly, fold in sautéed veggies.
Divide evenly into muffin tins. Bake 20-25 mins, until toothpick come out clean.
Can be stored 5-6 days in the refrigerator, or 3 months in the freezer.
Approximate nutrition (per muffin): 81 calories, 1.6g fat, 88.8mg sodium, 8.5g carbohydrates, 2.2g fiber, 1.3g sugar, 7.3g protein
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How have you enjoyed making co-workers, friends, or family stare with strange but good creations this week? The link up rules can be found here or by clicking on “Strange But Good” in the menu bar above. In short, I want to see what concoctions have earned you weird looks from co-workers, family and friends! Post your Strange But Good creations, grab the logo below for your blog, and link up here.
Remember to use #strangebutgood in any Tweets and Instagrams of your creations. 🙂
***
It’s finally going to be sunny all weekend here! Perfect timing for a long weekend.
What is your favorite hot sauce or spice?
Do you prefer savory or sweet muffins?
Plantain Zucchini Muffins
Who has TIME to post negative comments?
Not that I don’t speak them from time to time…
It takes a real effort to read a post and formulate a less-than-nice comment. Why would you go to all this trouble? Why do you care so much?
Anonymous posted this on my blog yesterday:
Normally I wouldn’t waste the energy to respond… but I’m feeling feisty this week.
- I actually do use a lot of “real” dishes. Often I eat my breakfast from a coffee mug
- I’m such an
old ladyhorderresponsible citizen of the world that I will use the same paper plate for every meal I eat a work in a day - You don’t have to read my blog. If you don’t like what I say/do/eat from, don’t read. I don’t agree with judgmental, funeral-protesting ass holes, so I steer clear of Westboro Baptist Church.
- Anon… I’ve always been curious. Why go to the effort to comment but not even have the kahunas to use your name?
I feel better, Don’t you? You will after you taste my muffin. 😉
The plantain craze took me a while to get on board with. I was too busy with kabocha.
Now that I’ve gotten on the train, I’m putting them in all the things. I love to just caramelize them for eggs, pizza-creations, and salads. That Plantain Ginger Protein Bread rocked. The natural next step was a muffin.
I’m not exaggerating when I tell you this is one of the best muffins I’ve ever made. And it was easy. Half of the ingredients are just tossed into a blender!
After blending the plantain and the wet ingredients, pour it into the dry, give it a quick stir, and fold in the zucchini.
The result of this plantain and zucchini combo is a fantastically moist, satisfying sweet muffin. Depending on the ripeness of your plantain (it should almost be black) and your preferences, you may not even need that extra bit of sweetener!
Those of you who know me won’t be surprised that I amped up the protein in these. I used my favorite Growing Naturals Rice protein. With that addition, these muffins have more than 6 grams of protein!
The only sugar comes from the plantains, but the fact that these are on the healthy side doesn’t mean they don’t taste like the “real” deal. Don’t believe me? Ask my favorite concierge…
Testify!
If you find a Siamese plantain, you can make a double batch! Have you even seen this before?!
It has to be good luck or something…
Plantain Zucchini Muffins
- 1/4 C spelt flour
- 1 scoop (31g) Growing Naturals Vanilla Rice Protein Powder
- 1-2 T Xylitol (or other sweetener, adjust based on sweetness of plantain)
- 1 tsp no salt baking powder
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground ginger
- 1 large, ripe plantain (~160g)
- 1 egg (or flax egg)
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 C zucchini, grated (~120g)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease 6 regular-sized muffin tins with Pam/butter/Earth Balance.
In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients.
In blender (I used the Magic Bullet) bowl, puree plantain until smooth. Add egg and vanilla, blending again just to combine.
Add the wet mixture to the dry, stirring until just combined. Fold in grated zucchini. Pour into muffin tins and bake for 20-25 minutes.
Makes 6 muffins.
Approximate Nutrition Info: 102 calories, 1.2g fat, 18.8g carbohydrates, 20.6g sodium, 1.9g fiber, 4.8g sugar, 6.3g protein
***
I’m pretty excited… this weekend I’m going to take a class to being getting my personal training certification! I’m baking these muffins for the class. 🙂
Why do you think people leave negative comments anonymously? Have you ever done it?
Have you gotten on the plantain train? Hee hee… that rhymes.
Aboard the USS Underwood
Only in Chile…
Katherine, Me, Julia, and Captain Pete
…would 3 American women end up aboard a US Navy ship.
Our officer-friends, Pete and Michael, gave us a tour of a their ship, the USS Underwood. This was not your boring 5th grade field trip tour. We were privileged to a ~3 hour behind the scenes view of the ship. Touring the ship was certainly a highlight of our trip to Chile. SO cool!
The USS Underwood was commissioned in 1983 (an excellent year, if I may say so). This thing was HUGE. I would get lost on there. The guided missile ship is 453 feet long and houses a helicopter! It also has machine guns and torpedoes. I felt like I was in a 10 year old’s fantasy land. 🙂
Here are a few highlights:
Clockwise, Left to Right: Captain’s coffee mug, the surf board the Captain keeps in his office/room, radar room (in additions to enemies, they have to watch for whales!), the Chilean ship parked next door, view of Valparaiso from the deck, look out, weights so they can work on their fitness, us posing with a machine gun, staring down the barrel, the on-board helicopter, us IN the helicopter, the flag in the back of the boat
Fun fact of the day: Navy men are fans of Beachbody. During our tour we ran across a group of guys doing one of the Insanity DVDs! I wanted to join them, but didn’t have the right attire. *sigh*
The Captain knew about my food obsession and offered to let us take a peek into the ship’s kitchen. It would be so hard to live on their diet – they can’t keep a lot of fresh fruits and veggies on board because it goes bad after a few days at sea. The chef, Livingston, was nice enough to let us intrude as he was preparing for dinner.
We finished up the tour at the front of the ship.
One fun fact: the bell you see in the middle-left pic below doubles as a baptismal pool. If you are assigned to a ship when your child is ready to be baptized, the bell is turned upside down and filled with water for the baby to be dunked in. Afterwards the baby’s name is engraved inside – it remains there for the life of the ship!
To our friends aboard the USS Underwood: Thank you so much for your hospitality, and for your service. We wish you the best on the rest of your journey!
Please ignore the fact that I look sickly in a baseball cap.
The ship’s motto:
“Whensoever hostile aggressions . . . require a resort to war, we must meet our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies.” -Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Andrew Jackson, December 3, 1806
On an entirely different note, please click here to hop over the Lindsay’s blog, The Lean Green Bean, today and check out my guest post. While she’s vacationing in the sunshine, I’m home baking these no-sugar-added, gluten-free Banana-Maple Zucchini Muffins:
There is a vegan option, of course. 🙂
***
Recaps = over! Back to your regularly scheduled food blog.
What is you favorite type of muffin?
Can you imagine trying to find something to eat aboard a ship for months at a time? Poor guys!
Chocolate Zucchini Muffins
These Chocolate Zucchini Muffin sound a little strange, but you’d never guess the sneaky zucchini add. Best of all, these 100 calorie bites are vegan, gluten-free, and almost sugar-free.
This deliciousness took me a week to get right. But when I did… oh lawd they were good!
Judging from the reaction these chocolate muffins got at this week’s dinner party, I found the right combination of ingredients.
Chocolate-y and moist, these are muffins you could chow on for breakfast without guilt.
Why guiltless? Because you would be starting out your day with veggies!
The “secret” ingredient in these is zucchini! Fool your kids, your partner, your co-workers… yourself… you cannot detect a trace of the veggie. I’d put money on it.
I love making these as mini muffins. It makes them perfect for snacking, and they remind me of those trashy-but-delicious brownie bites from the grocery store.
These zucchini-filled treats please basically everyone. They’re vegan, gluten-free, almost sugar-free, and a mere 100 calories! Unicorn brownie bites!
I realize the ingredient list is long, but it doesn’t take much time to throw it together and the end result is well worth it!
Chocolate Zucchini Muffins
- 1/4 C cocoa powder
- 1/4 C coconut flour
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp guar gum (or cornstarch)
- 2 T Xylitol
- 2 T NuNaturals Fiber Baking Blend (or other sweetener)
- 1/2 tsp instant coffee
- Shake of salt
- 1 flax egg (1 T ground flax + 3 T water)
- 1/4 C unsweetened vanilla almond milk (or other milk substance)
- 2 T coconut oil
- 2 T unsweetened apple sauce
- 1 T almond butter (or other nut butter)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 C shredded zucchini
- 1/4 C chocolate chips
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Whisk together dry ingredients in a large bowl. Set aside.
In a small bowl mix egg, milk, oil, nut butter, and vanilla until well-combined. Pour the wet mixture into the dry and stir until just combined.
Squeeze out zucchini to remove excess moisture, then add to batter along with chocolate chips. Gently fold to combine – don’t over-mix!
Place 12 muffin liners in a muffin pan (or lightly grease a mini muffin pan) and spoon the mixture into each tin so they are about 1/2 full.
Bake on the middle rack for 10-15 mins, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely before serving.
Makes 12 small muffins or 24 minis.
Approximate Nutrition for small muffin: 100 calories, 7.4g fat, 9.5g carbohydrates, 3g fiber, 2g sugar, 1.5g protein
Notes:
- I have tried this with a full 1/4 C of coconut oil (rather than 2 T oil and 2 T apple sauce) and found it to be too greasy, but you could try it either way
- You could also leave out the guar gum; however, it helps the muffins to stay together better (coconut flour can result in crumbly baked goods)
- If you can’t find Xylitol or the Baking Blend, you can use any sugar/sugar-replacer
***
Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the Buzz… my “Beefy” TVP Chili made the FoodBuzz Top 9 today!
How do you sneak veggies in?
If you have worked with coconut flour, what’s your favorite recipe?
