Oat Chia Blueberry Chocolate Chip Healthy Eggless Muffins

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

I love muffins. I don't eat them but I love them. Because they are high in fat, high in calories and once I start eating them, I don't think I will stop. I will need to have one for breakfast every day!

Items in my usual boring but healthy breakfast rotation include plain plain oatmeal with brown sugar and dried apricots, Fage with added honey, hemp seeds and berries,  Breakfast Chia Pudding with Berries or Overnight Oatmeal that I learned about from the The Yummy Life Blog.

When the The Yummy Life Blog posted the recipe for the "Magic Muffins", healthy muffins I became obsessed with trying them. Let me tell you, these were a huge hit. Both kids and husband approved! I will definitely be making these again. The original recipe is here: http://www.theyummylife.com/magic_muffins. So far, I tried blueberry to which I added chocolate chips. I will definitely be trying a variety of these and will report back. I had to modify the recipe a bit because I was not able to find some of the flour varieties (barley or brown rice) so I just used oat. No issue. These were moist and delicious. There were meant for make ahead if desired but I made all 12. For my gang, made ahead would only work if the recipe is doubled.

These have are whole grain and have no eggs or no butter. They get their moisture from the chia seeds which create a gel like substanace! Magic! 


Ingredients

Dry
2 cups of Whole Grain Oat Flour 
      (note Yummy Life's recipe uses 1 cup of oat flour, 1/2 cup of barley flour and 1/2 cup of brown rice flour but I could            not find these so substituted, no issues) 
2 tablespoons GROUND chia seeds
2 teaspoons baking POWDER
1/2 teaspoon baking SODA
1 teaspoon ground cinamon
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Wet:
1 cup lowfat buttermilk*
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/3 cup honey (my kids thought these need to be a tiny bit sweeter, will add a bit more next time)
Fruit, nuts, etc. 

Other:
Cooking Spray (I used Trader Joe's Coconut Spray) 

*Buttermilk substitute can be created by combining 1 tablespoon of vinegar with enough low fat milk to make 1 cup total liquid and letting is sit for 10 minutes. I did not try this. But if you do, please let me know how this turns out. 

1. In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients. Mix.

2. In a medium bowl, combine all the wet ingredients. Mix.

3. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients. Mix to combine. Do not overmix, it's fine if mixture is a bit lumpy. You will NOT BE STIRRING again when adding mixture to your muffin tin.

4. Allow to sit on counter for 30-40 minutes. Or cover and refrigerate for up to 5 days. I did not try to refrigerate. You can double or triple the recipe. 

5. Wash your fruit or berries that you will be using. I used about 1 cup of blueberries and about 1/2 cup of dark chocolate chips.

6. Preheat oven to 350. Spray muffin tin with cooking spray.

7. Add a bit of muffin mixture, add a few blueberries and a few chocolate chips. Add more mixtures till muffin cup about 2/3 full. Add a few more blueberries and chocolate chips to each.

Assembled muffins ready to bake



8. Bake about 22-25 minutes till toothpick  inserted in center comes up clean. Mine took about 25 minutes. Allow to rest for 5 minutes before moving to cooking rack.



Baked  muffins straight from oven


Baked muffins cooling! Kids waiting impatiently!

Yesterday, per my kids request, I tried two additional varieties, raspberry chocolate chip and banana chocolate chip. Both were delicious. I cut the raspberries into halves and bananas into half circles layered same way I did blueberries.

Muffins Batch 2: Raspberry, Banana, Blueberry. All have dark chocolate chips. 

Per the original recipe, these can be cooked in microwave as individual serving.

I have not tried these.The Yummy Life suggests many varieties or you can make up your own! My girls are already begging me to make more so I will review those when I do. They each devoured 2 each for breakfast. The younger one said they need to be a bit sweeter and dipped them in berry preserves.




 
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