Strawberry Breakfast Muffins

A few days ago one of our local grocery stores had a promotion on their strawberries – buy 3 punnets for R25.00 (about US$2.50 with the current [horrific] exchange rate). Naturally this got me very excited and I promptly made the purchase. It was only a day or two later that I realised that actually consuming three punnets of rapidly ripening strawberries in time was problematic and short of freezing all of them for later use I was out of ideas.

Then it dawned on me – why not try making muffins?? If they can use blueberries, cranberries, raisins and all sorts of other fruits in baked goods, why not strawberries? I also had to make sure that they were healthy and filling enough to eat for breakfast, so after an intense Googling session to find vegan muffin recipes to adapt, I finally settled on a combination of The Happy Herbivore’s Oatmeal Muffins and The Recipe Circus’s Banana Strawberry Oat Muffins.

The great news: Apart from being very tasty, filling, and convenient to take to work or school, these muffins are also gluten free (if you use certified gluten free oats), refined sugar free, and oil free. You can even make them pretty much fat-free too if you omit the peanut butter. I’m sold!

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups oat flour (basically rolled oats ground in a blender until it turns into flour. For an example of the process see my post on Summer Weekend Veggie Burgers)
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1 large ripe banana
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup unsweetened soy milk (or any other non-dairy milk)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 cup chopped strawberries + 3 whole strawberries sliced longitudinally for garnish
• 1 heaped tbsp of natural peanut butter
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 fresh medjool dates, pitted and chopped

Ripe bananas are important!

Batter consistency

METHOD:

1. Combine the oat flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl
2. Blend the banana, soy milk, vanilla essence, dates and peanut butter until smooth
3. Pour the blended liquid mixture into the bowl with the dry ingredients and mix well to combine.
4. Fold in the chopped strawberries and start adding the rolled oats, stirring the batter as you do so.
5. The mixture should be thick and sticky.
6. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C) and spoon the batter into silicone cupcake trays (or normal cupcake liners placed in a cupcake tray).
7. Top with sliced strawberries and allow to bake for 15-20 minutes or until firm and slightly browned ( a sharp knife should come out clean when inserted into the cupcake).
8. Allow to cool and enjoy!

Before going in to the oven

*Can be served with jam, peanut butter (my personal favourite), vegan margarine, honey or syrup.

The results!

*These muffins are so versatile – you can add nuts and seeds, spices, and other fruit to the batter as well. I also made a batch without the strawberries and used raisins, cinnamon, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and cashew nuts to create healthy breakfast seed muffins.)