This is a really easy and flexible recipe, it can be modified depending on what you happen to find in your cupboards, and can be swapped out to be more vegan or include different flavors (notes at end).
Choose local ingredients to make more local, organic to make more organic. This makes about 3 dozen muffins, so if too much – halve the recipe.
Preheat oven to 350 F
In small bowl pour 2.5 c buttermilk with 2 c Bob’s Red Mill 10 Grain Cereal (this needs to sit about 10 mins or until the liquid has been soaked up by the cereal). You can replace with oatmeal which does not need pre-soaking, and steel cut makes for a much denser/ chewier muffin (and needs presoaking).
Then in a different 8-qt or larger bowl combine
- 2 c flour (oat, rye, whole wheat, etc…)
- 2/3 c ground flax seed- 1/2 c oat bran or wheat bran
- 1 c brown sugar (more tightly packed = sweeter taste)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 teaspoon baking soda
Add to the bigger bowl 2 eggs, more buttermilk or soymilk so that the batter has the consistency of very thick soup (ie. if it keeps it shape when dropped, it’s too thick and you’ll get bumpy topped muffins).
Add cereal mix. You can add a tablespoon of either vanilla extract or cinnamon extract (both of which you can make yourself by soaking vanilla pods OR cinnamon sticks in alchohol for about 6 months – homemade really does taste better in this case but you have to bake a lot or be really bored for this option). I’ve used orange essence here to (1 teaspoon) or almond essence with a nice final combined taste, so feel free to experiment.
At this point you can also add other fun stuff:
- dried fruit (pictured here are with cranberries)
- coasely chopped up nuts (here is pecans)
- dark or milk chocolate chips
- orange or lemon zest (the peel, which if you don’t have a peeler, you can just take off with a paring knife – try not to get to much of the white part which is more bitter)
- dessicated coconut, best if no sugar added
- whatever you like the taste of or have laying around and think it would be a good match for what’s already in the bowl
I actually taste the batter at this point to see if it’s sweet enough or if it needs more of something.
I use any paper cups cos it’s more efficient baking, and cupcake sized tray. Fill each cup so that you have about 1/2 inch from the top. Pop in and bake at 350 for 15 mins, if you like them more brown on the top – broil for a few minutes (no more than 3-4 mins).
For other swap outs:
- I’ve also used cooked quinoa before which makes for a smoother/ less textured muffin
- too much buckwheat flour tends makes the muffin a bit too heavy and dense for me, and you may love it so feel free to experiment. I usually don’t use more than 25% of total flour volume for buckwheat unless that’s the only flour I have left, then I experiment.
- instead of eggs, I use either a cup of mashed bananas or applesauce without high fructose corn syrup. Check other egg substitutes here.
- instead of buttermilk, you can do the juice of half a lemon (or a whole one if you like the tart taste or fresh squeezed orange juice if you don’t like lemon then use orange zest instead) to soy milk for same volume of buttermilk – both help make the muffin fluffier and lighter
- instead of sugar you can use honey or stevia (maple syrup is less sweet for the same volume). I’ve also thrown in equal measures of jam or preserves here if you have a jar you want to use up.
That’s it!
