A Healthy Snack To End 2008

I woke up to the last day of 2008 with a kitchen full of spotty bananas. Oh joy. So the agenda for today was to make baked goods out of all those over-ripen fruit. I love muffins for breakfast except that they are so high in calories, refined carbs, and fat! Luckily, flipping through Dreena Burton's Vive Le Vegan! cookbook, I saw her recipe for Banana Oat Bundles. It is wheat-free, very low in fat, and contains just the minimal amount of unrefined sugar. How perfect is that! I immediately gave this recipe a whirl and I am pleased to report that it bakes up to a very credible banana oat muffin without tasting like "healthy food". This is definitely a recipe that I will make on a regular basis. I brought a couple as my mid-workout snack and it is a nice change from my usual energy bars.

Adapted from Vive Le Vegan!.

Ingredients

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 cup ground oats
• 1/4 cup demerara sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
• 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/8 cup flaxseed
• 1/4 cup sunflower seeds
• 2 large over-ripe bananas, puree
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 tbsp canola oil

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350C. Line 12 muffin tin with silicone or paper liners.
2. In a large mixing bowl, stir together all the dry ingredients. In a small mixing bowl, beat together all the wet ingredients.
3. Gentle stir the wet ingredients into the dry. Do not overmix.
4. Divide batter to muffin tin. Bake for 20 minutes or until the top is golden brown. Enjoy warm out of the oven or at room temperature.

Comments

[Izabella]

Nice blog, Candy! Since you, too, are calorie-conscious, I wonder if all that sugar was really necessary; bananas are pretty sweet! I don't use sugar lately, I tend to use dates as sweetner, and honey which tastes too good to last long in my kitchen lol. I am trying to figure out a way to adapt your recipe to a raw snack, since I am flirting with the raw food movement. When you need to lose a few pounds, raw food works like magic. I will let you know if I get anything that tastes good out of your (and Dreena's ingredients). Izabella