🍌🐒🥥🍒Claire's Crazy Bakes and Kitchen Hacks - Chapter 38: "Healthy-er" Reduced Sugar Oatmeal, Banana and Cherry muffins! 🍌🐒🥥🍒

With the internet and social media constantly buzzing about health this, and gluten-free that, and arguments over what's worse for you: fat, meat, or sugar, it's tough to know what route to follow anymore.

The truth is, I think most of us know the real truth: that no fad diet is going to fix your life. While reducing stodge (refined starches and sugars), processed food, and saturated fats is a no-brainer, we're all partial to a pizza, a portion of fries, or a tub of ice cream from time to time. And you know what, I think that's perfectly fine.

I've had a craving for a batch of homemade muffins for a while. Since I am working on a tight deadline, attempting to write my 1st book, I don't have time to fuss around in the kitchen trying to make myself breakfast or lunch every day. Also, my knee and back injuries often leave me unable to face the stairs, so I thought I'd try to find a good, healthy, moist, and tasty muffin recipe.

It seemed like a tall order when I Googled oatmeal and banana muffins and most of what came up was people asking why they're always so dry. It's the mistake so many people make with their muffin recipes. Too many eggs and not enough oil. You want moist cake? add oil. You want moist muffins? That's right. You need oil. You don't want to be left with greasy fingers, but after eating a muffin, you do still want to feel like you can pat yourself on the back for having a healthy snack while not feeling like you've been chewing on horse feed for the last ten minutes as your dry-ass muffin slowly sucks your will to live. You can always use coconut oil as a healthier option. The stuff is fantastic and the slight coconut flavor goes almost unnoticed in baking. You can also buy deflavoured coconut oil if it bothers you that much.

The glorious thing about making muffins is there's no finicky business. You can just throw all the ingredients together. The only trick is to make sure the ingredients are combined without overmixing. This leads to flops or muffins that don't rise.

So, I found a recipe but also went wild with what I had floating around in an attempt to make them a bit more exciting. I also tweaked oil and egg ratios and doubled quantities to get 24 muffins out instead of 12. With a party of five, what am I going to do with 12 muffins? Hide them from the rest of the family? 😜😂🤫

A few things to make sure of is that you always have "spray and cook" on hand at all times and that you always keep a spare stash of cupcake liners - that is, if you're like me and get weird and sudden urges to bake. Baking paper is also a very important thing to have around, as I discovered last night that I was a few cupcake liners short. I just cut some round pieces out of the baking paper so that the batter wouldn't stick to the bottom of the tins and it worked like a charm! There was no need to line the sides because I gave both trays a generous coating of "spray and cook."

Anyway, enough with all the chatter. Let's get baking!

Ingredients:
(American measurements)

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup desiccated coconut
1 cup sugar
2 heaped teaspoons of baking powder
2 heaped teaspoons of baking soda/ bicarb
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1.5 cups of milk (of your choice - I used regular full-fat dairy)
2/3 cup oil (of your choice - I used sunflower)
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
2 cups/ 6 large mashed bananas
1/4 packet of chopped up glacé cherries
4 teaspoons of cinnamon

Tools:
measuring cup/ jug
Scissors
cupcake liners
spray and cook
baking paper (just incase)
2 x muffin baking trays
a large bowl for mixing
A big mixing spoon
A teaspoon
A Soup or dessert spoon
A fork and a bowl for beating the eggs and mashing bananas
A cloth for sticky fingers

Method:
Remember to spray and line your tins before you get started and preheat your oven to around 200 degrees Celsius.

I started off by beating the eggs in one bowl and mashing the bananas in another.

I then cut up the cherries I had left over from Christmas.

I then basically threw all the ingredients together and combined.

I baked each tray for around 35 minutes. I honestly overfilled the cases and I was expecting a big mess but look how gorgeously they rose! And no sticking!

What a great recipe! - Also keep in mind that I took some massive liberties here and deviated quite drastically from the original recipes I found.

It was hard not to stuff them all in my face as they came out of the oven, but it was supper time.

I did, however, treat myself to a lovely and well-deserved breakfast this morning after @zakludick took @aimeludick, @merenludick, and @matthew-williams for a day out at the hobby shop AKA Sword and Board. I did send them off with their own tub of muffins, don't worry :p

Now that I've attended to my client's feedback (which was 22 messages long 😱😱 and came through at midnight last night, thanks to the time difference, and I forgot to turn notification noises off on my PC, so I couldn't sleep thinking she hated my work - which was stupid cause she doesn't...lol?) and I've shared my recipe with you, I can now do what we South Africans do best. Embrace that "maagie vol, oogies toe" (tummy full, eyes closed) feeling and take a well-earned nap!

Happy baking everyone!

P.S .

I did put butter and some jam on my muffins but ended up taking the jam off. The muffins were actually just lovely on their own and certainly sweet enough. The butter also wasn't really necessary, I just happened to have some lying around. The slightly salty butter brought out the banana and cinnamon flavors, which was great. That being said though, simple is better and you can definitely eat them just as they are!