Autumnal Fresh Apple Cinnamon Muffins

Another sweet recipe!
Have you ever found yourself tasting a new recipe and realizing to your disappointment that it didn't live up to what you expected it to taste like? It wasn't necessarily BAD, but it wasn't anything to jump over either. Well last year I found a recipe for Fresh Apple Cinnamon Muffins and got SUPER EXCITED because they literally looked like what I hoped autumn would TASTE like, but to my dismay they tasted rather bland.

However, I played with the recipe a bunch, and am proud to present my redefined recipe for Fresh Apple Cinnamon Muffins that I actually DO really love eating.

These babies make your house smell AMAZING and they taste like fall food to me, and I absolutely adore making them. I made a batch for my boyfriend last week as a surprise breakfast and he loved them!

I included the original ingredient below just to show you the changes I made.

The ORIGINAL RECIPE CALLED FOR:

(I underlined everything I changed)

1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/3 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, divided

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1/2 cup milk

1 apple, peeled, cored, and finely chopped

4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) melted butter

1/3 cup chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans)

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

As you can see from my underlining everywhere I changed the original recipe quite a bit, and I even added some vanilla for some extra flavor. 

Alright so for MY recipe you're going to need:

• 1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup white sugar (you could also try brown sugar. I haven't tried that yet but I've been considering it. Let me know how it turns out)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, divided
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup half and half or whole milk (I used half and half)
• 1 and 1/2 medium to large apples (the recipe tastes weird if you don't have enough apple), chopped into small CHUNKS (the previous recipe called for finely chopped)
• 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) melted butter
• 3/4 cup chopped pecans (this measurement is rough. Kinda like when you measure out chocolate chips for cookie dough. You're going to want a fair amount of nuts stirred into your batter, and then you're going to need about 1/4 cup extra to go on top of the muffins in the end, so just have a bag of nuts on hand to experiment with until you find what you like)
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar

Makes: roughly 17 (used to make 12 but when I changed ingredients it screwed up the yield)

Cook time: 15-20 min (for me it only takes 15-16 minutes to bake these because I use a convection oven)

• Preheat oven to 375
• Line 1 and 1/2 cupcake/muffin tins with paper liners
• Peel and chop apples (this time I used 1 large apple and 1 small apple instead of 1/5 large)
• In a small bowl combine brown sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and 1/4 cup chopped pecans. Adjust pecan amount to desire
• In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, salt, and APPROXIMATELY 1/2 cup pecans
• Whisk with a fork and add more pecans if necessary
• In a medium bowl, beat together the egg and half and half (or whole milk. I like to whip this until it's frothy but not thick
• Stir in chopped apple, and melted butter
• Add dry ingredients all at once (the original recipe calls for you to add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients but that took too much work and didn't taste any different)
• Stir until just mixed
• Scoop into muffin tins filling each cup about 2/3 full, and use a spoon to top off each muffin with a sprinkle of the cinnamon-brown-sugar-pecan topping
• Bake and enjoy :)

Let me know in the comments if you tried and enjoyed this recipe! Happy autumn to you all :)

Banana Nut Muffins

Another recipe for you.

The only thing I hated about going paleo (besides giving up pasta) was the fact that I wouldn't be able to bake anymore. Baking is one of my passions, and I just assumed that when I threw sugar out the window I would have to get rid of baking too, but fortunately this is NOT true. There are plenty of paleo recipes out there, even for MUFFINS of all things. So in my excitement I headed out to the grocery store and picked up some paleo-friendly flours so I could give these recipes a whirl. One of my favorites by far is the Banana Nut Muffin recipe I found here. They're originally meant for macadamia nuts, but those are rather fatty and weren't in stock at my go-to grocery store when I was craving muffins so I had to get crafty and throw in walnuts instead. I stayed mostly true to the original recipe, but I strayed a little due to lack of correct ingredients.

So the original recipe calls for:

• 2/3 cup macadamia nuts of choice, chopped
• 2/3 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
• 1 cup blanched almond flour
• ¼ cup organic coconut flour - source
• 3 ripe bananas, peeled and mashed
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1/3 cup raw creamy honey
• 1/3 cup organic coconut oil, melted and cooled
• ¾ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp unrefined sea salt
• 1 tsp coconut water vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

I underlined the things I made slight adjustments to. Feel free to use the original recipe if you want, or follow my changes. Whatever is easiest for you.

First off, I didn't have macadamia nuts on hand so I used finely chopped walnuts, but I kept the measurement the same.

Secondly I didn't have the right number of ripe bananas on hand. Oops. I can't be alone here, please tell me this happens to other people too. The best bananas for baking are a darker yellow with some brown spots on them because they're the sweetest, and the mushiest, and the point of using bananas in paleo recipes is for the sugar. Duh. So the fact that I had 2 out of 3 bananas in the correct "state" was unfortunate because I really needed that last banana to be much more ripe. It was freshly bought, and completely yellow (I dont't think green would work...), so it clearly wasn't going to be mushy or sweet enough.

BUT DO I HAVE A TRICK FOR YOU.

The next time you're one ripe banana short you can fake the last banana's sweet taste and consistency. 

What I do is peel the yellow banana and put it in a separate bowl from my ripe bananas, and try to mash it with a fork the best I can, and then I add cocoanut milk, and a little bit of honey to the mashed banana bowl. This makes the banana SO much easier to continue mashing and stirring. Plus the honey will make it sweet enough to use in substitute for a ripe banana.

You're welcome.

I don't know if I would use that trick with ALL unripe bananas, because sometimes unripe bananas can irritate your mouth and tongue, and unfortunately that trait will be present in the muffin (irritating muffins are no fun) but if it doesn't bother you then go ahead and give it a try. 

I underlined the "cocoanut water vinegar" because I don't even know WHAT that is, and I didn't have any on me so I used pure unsweetened lemon juice instead. It worked just as well, and you can't taste the difference as far as I'm concerned.

Lastly I underlined vanilla because I am a total sucker for sweets, and 1 tsp did not look like enough vanilla to me so I may have used 2 generous teaspoons. You shouldn't do this if you want to minimize the sugar and fat content in your muffins, but it felt like a necessary change for me. In my defense I have this fantastic vanilla from Mexico (and I feel fancy because I didn't order it online, I literally went to Mexico and bought it, and then took it back in my suitcase), and it's to die for so I overuse it in everything.


I followed the baking instructions pretty closely, so I'll just copy-paste them below, and underline the replacements I made.


Preheat your oven to 350 degrees convection (I didn't even remember to turn on convection when I made these... oops).
Take out 2 muffin tins and place muffin liners inside.

• In a large bowl, add nuts, coconut, flours, baking soda, salt; mix to combine.
• To the same bowl, add eggs, bananas, honey, coconut oil, vinegar, vanilla; mix again to combine.
• Drop by tablespoons into the muffin tins. Fill 14 muffins full. *This will make 14 full sized muffins as long as there is no batter eaten in the process. (I made big muffins so I could make it 12. Too much work to use another pan for just 2 muffins you know?)
• Bake for about 30-35 minutes, rotating the pans at 20 minutes for best results. Let cool in pan for 5-10 minutes. Then move muffins to a cooling rack, which helps to firm up their bottoms. Enjoy!