Sprouted Spelt Banana Walnut Muffins #BreadBakers

Made with one of the ancient grains, these sprouted spelt banana walnut muffins have a wonderful nutty flavor and a mellow sweetness from the banana and brown sugar. 

Hard to believe but my fellow Bread Bakers and I have been baking together once a month for more than 10 years! We’ve lost some members and gained others over the years but I love their enthusiasm each December when I ask for hosts and themes for the new year. 

To take the pressure off, I usually volunteer for January and so it is this year as well. I chose ancient grains as our main ingredient because we hadn’t used them as a group since January 2016. Seemed about time to revisit that theme! 

Sprouted Spelt Banana Muffins - Small Batch

This recipe makes six normal sized muffins but it is easily doubled if you need a full batch of 12. Right at the end, I decided to fold in some chopped walnuts so I was going to make those optional but they were such a good addition that I changed the name of my muffins!

Ingredients

1 cup or 120g sprouted spelt flour

1/3 cup, packed, or 66g brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup or 60ml milk

1/4 cup or 60ml canola or other light oil, plus extra for the pan

1 very overripe banana (mine weighed 92g without peel)

1 large egg

1/4 cup or 28g chopped walnut halves, plus six more to top, if desired.

Method

Preheat the oven to 400°F or 200°C. Prepare your six-cup muffin pan by brushing it will a little canola oil. 

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.

In another bowl, add the banana, milk, oil and egg. Mash the banana with a fork. Then use the fork to mix the four together thoroughly. 

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredient bowl. Fold until well combined. 

Add the chopped walnuts and fold again until combined.

Spoon the batter equally into the 6 muffin cups. Top each with a single walnut half, if using. Set a timer for five minutes and leave the muffin pan to rest on the counter. 

Bake for 5 minutes in your preheated oven then decrease the oven temperature to 350°F or 180°C WITHOUT opening the oven door, and bake for 15-18 minutes more until domed and set. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean or with just a couple crumbs attached.

Let cool for a few minutes then remove to the wire rack to cool completely. 

Enjoy!

It’s the second Tuesday of the month so that means it’s Bread Baker time. As I mentioned above, this month I’m hosting and I’ve chosen ancient grains as our theme. Check out the breads with ancient grains my fellow bloggers are sharing below.

• Bajri Tilachi Bhakri from Sneha's Recipe
• Banana Millet Bread from The Wimpy Vegetarian
• Banana Oat Pancakes from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Khapli Wheat Roti from Cook with Renu
• Milled Ancient Multigrain Bread from A Messy Kitchen
• Peanut Butter Ancient Grain Corn Muffins from Palatable Pastime
• Spelt and Poppyseed Sourdough Bread from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Spelt Coconut Sourdough Bread from Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Sprouted Spelt Banana Walnut Muffins from Food Lust People Love

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin this Sprouted Spelt Banana Walnut Muffins! 

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Olive Cream Cheese Stuffed Celery

This olive cream cheese stuffed celery is a throwback recipe from the Sixties but it’s still just as deliciously tasty today. Savory, creamy AND crunchy. Mix, fill and munch! 

Not too long back, a friend of mine celebrated her 60th birthday by throwing a Sixties theme party. Guests were asked to contribute a dish from that decade and come dressed in Sixties attire. 

The fun food included salmon mousse made in a fish mold, deviled eggs, several Jello desserts, a spiky cheeseball shaped like a hedgehog, a multi-layered savory sandwich “cake” and pistachio marshmallow fluff, just to name a few. 

It was a super fun party and a delight to see what everyone brought and wore. At first I thought I didn’t have anything to wear that was Sixties worthy but then I remembered, I own a caftan! We need to bring those back. It is the most comfortable outfit ever for a party.

Olive Cream Cheese Stuffed Celery

This recipe makes a bunch of filling! My pictures show just half of the stuffed celery I made. Feel free to halve the quantities if you don’t need that many. I used the already cut celery stalks one can buy in a bag. 

Ingredients

2 lbs or 900g celery stalks, washed and cut into 3 sections each

2 packages (8 oz or 225g each) cream cheese, at room temperature

¾ cup, chopped, or 120g pimento-stuffed green olives

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

A few generous grinds of black pepper

Method

Thoroughly dry each piece of celery with paper towels. 

Mix the  chopped olives and garlic together in a large bowl.

Add in the cream cheese and black pepper in and mix until completely homogenous.

Use a plastic bag with a corner cut off or a piping bag to put a generous amount of cream cheese filling down the center indentation of each celery piece. 

Serve immediately or cover with cling film and refrigerate till ready to serve.

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and today my blogger friends and I are sharing nutritious nibbles. Many thanks to our host, Wendy of A Day in the Life on a Farm. Check out the links below. 

• Culinary Cam: Adventures in Bliss Balls 
• Sneha's Recipe: Beetroot Tikkis 
• Karen's Kitchen Stories : Fresh Tomato Salsa 
• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Fruit and Nut Bars 
• Our Good Life : Healthy Pizza Bites 
• Food Lust People Love: Olive Cream Cheese Stuffed Celery 
• Amy's Cooking Adventures: Peanut Butter Energy Balls (No Bake)

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

Pin this olive cream cheese stuffed celery! 

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Amarena Cherry Lemon Muffins #MuffinMonday

Made with delicious Amarena wild cherries and their syrup, these fluffy cherry lemon muffins are perfect for snack or teatime. 

I'm guessing that most of you aren't cherry snobs because nor was I until just a few short weeks ago! A maraschino cherry was a maraschino cherry. Red, bright and sweet. 

But then I learned about Luxardo cherries and had to buy some. Guys, they are a world apart from the jarred cherries we can buy in a grocery store with a price tag to match. Enter the Amarena cherries at Costco! They are also more expensive than grocery store maraschinos but they come in a very large jar making them much cheaper than Luxardos. 

And, to make cherry buying decisions even easier, when I did just a little research, their reviews online are better too. We did a taste test and the Amarenas slightly outdid the Luxardos. 

Amarena Cherry Lemon Muffins

If you don't have fancy cherries though, by all means use the grocery store maraschinos. Lemon and cherries are a great combination. This recipe makes about 16 regular muffins.

Ingredients

2 cups or 250g flour

1/3 cup or 66g sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 small lemon (for zest and 4 teaspoons juice)

2 eggs

1/2 cup or 120ml milk

1/3 cup or 75ml canola or other light oil

1/4 cup Amarena cherry syrup, plus extra to brush on, if desired

5 2/3 oz or 142g Amarena cherries (about 3/4 cup once halved)

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.  Butter or grease your muffin pans or line them with paper liners.

Add the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a large mixing bowl.

Grate in the lemon zest and mix.

Juice your lemon. Halve your cherries and set 16 pieces aside for topping the muffins.

Put the bigger pile of cut cherries in the flour mixture and toss well to cover.

In another smaller bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, oil, cherry syrup and lemon syrup.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones and fold until just mixed through.

Divide the mixture between the muffin cups in pan.  Top with reserved cherry halves.

Bake in your preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until golden. Allow them to cool for a few minutes then remove the muffins to a wire rack to cool completely.

Brush on a little extra cherry syrup, if desired. 

Enjoy!

It's the last Monday of the month so that means it's time for Muffin Monday! Many thanks to Karen of Karen's Kitchen Stories who stepped up and created this link list. Check out all the great muffin recipes we have for you today! 

• Amarena Cherry Lemon Muffins from Food Lust People Love
• Cranberry Eggnog Muffins from Jolene's Recipe Journal
• Honey Corn Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Orange and Pear Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Orange Poppy Seed Mini Muffins from A Messy Kitchen
• Sourdough Cranberry Banana Muffins from Zesty South Indian Kitchen

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all of our lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday can be found on our home page.

Pin these Amarena Cherry Lemon Muffins!

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Lassy Raisin Bread #BreadBakers

This Lassy Raisin Bread is made with molasses, whence comes the name. It is a classic recipe from Newfoundland, often enjoyed during the holidays. It's a lovely soft loaf that is delicious plain and even better toasted and buttered!

The end of the year has snuck up on me and I can’t imagine I’m the only one who feels that way. I was determined to find time to bake bread for this final Bread Bakers event though because I have finally figured out where to buy fresh yeast here in Houston (YAY!) and I just love how it smells and tastes in freshly baked bread. 

I chose to make this particular loaf because 1. My husband loves raisin bread, especially when it’s toasted and buttered and 2. this month my Bread Baker friends and I are sharing holiday breads from around the world. 

There are probably as many recipes for Newfoundland lassy or molasses bread as we have neighbors to my very north, but one thing they all have in common is the requisite molasses, generally the milder unsulphured kind, and raisins. The traditional loaves are shaped by making three balls of the dough and placing them in a row in a bread pan. 

Lassy Raisin Bread

My recipe is adapted from one on Rock Recipes which makes a very impressive FOUR loaves. They really, really love their lassy raisin bread! And once you've tried a slice, you'll see why.

Ingredients

1/4 cup or 60ml lukewarm water

1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon active dry yeast or 20g fresh yeast

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 - 3 cups or 312-375g flour, plus extra for kneading

1/3 cup or 80ml lukewarm milk

1/4 cup or 60ml molasses

5 teaspoons cooled melted butter, plus extra for brushing the baked loaf, optional

1 egg, beaten lightly

3/4 cup or 100g raisins

Method

In the bowl of an electric mixer that has a dough hook, stir the yeast and brown sugar into the lukewarm water and then let stand without stirring for 10 minutes. It should get nice and fluffy if your yeast is alive.

Add in 1 cup or 125g of the flour along with the salt, butter, warm milk and the beaten egg.

Using the regular paddle of your electric mixer, mix slowly for 4-5 minutes until the mixture is smooth with no lumps. Whoops, almost forgot our namesake molasses! Add that in and beat again. 

Switch to the dough hook at this point and begin to slowly incorporate the remaining flour. 

You may not need to use all of the flour. This is a soft dough that’s supposed to be a little sticky.  

Add the raisins at this point and continue to mix with the bread hook until the raisins are evenly distributed throughout the dough.

Place the dough in a large bowl and cover the bowl with cling film or a damp tea towel. 

Leave it to rest and rise for two hours. 

Punch the dough down and knead it for a few minutes by hand on a lightly floured work surface.

Divide the dough into three even pieces. I use my scale here to weigh the whole dough then divide by three. My dough weighed 760g so each ball weighed about 253g. Form each piece into a nice round ball. 

Line a medium loaf pan with baking parchment. (Mine was 9 x 5 in or 23 x 13cm.) 

Place the 3 balls of dough in your prepared loaf pan. 

Cover with greased cling film and allow the dough to rise until it is about 2 inches or 5cm above the rim of the pan, about 1 1/2 - 2 hours, depending on room temperature. 

[As you can see from the photo, pretty sure I overproved mine, making a strategical error when I decided I had time to nip out to the grocery store for salmon. Reader, as it turned out, I did not. While I was disappointed in the outside looks of this wonderful bread, the flavor and soft, tender crumb consoled me.]

Bake at 350°F or 180°C for about 40 minutes. The top and bottom crust should have good color. I tented mine halfway through with foil because it was browning so quickly. Check on yours in case you might want to do the same. 

Once baked, turn the loaf out onto a wire rack to cool. 

Brush the top with melted butter, if desired, to soften the top crust. Also, more butter is always better was one of my mom's rules. She was a very clever woman.

Leave to cool completely before slicing to serve. I'm trying to think of it as "rustic," not misshapen.

Enjoy! 

It’s the second Tuesday of the month which, as I mentioned above, means it’s time for my Bread Bakers to share their recipes. Many thanks to Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm for hosting and for choosing this lovely theme. Check out all the international holiday breads below. 

• Passion Kneaded: Christopsomo (Greek Christmas Bread) 
• A Messy Kitchen: Joululimppu 
• The Wimpy Vegetarian: Julekake : A Norwegian Christmas Bread 
• Food Lust People Love: Lassy Raisin Bread 
• A Day in the Life on the Farm: Laufabraud 
• Zesty South Indian Kitchen: Sourdough bobalki (Slovak Christmas eve bread) 
• Sneha's Recipe: Vánočka/Vanocka - Czech Christmas Bread 
• Karen's Kitchen Stories: Venezuelan Christmas Ham Bread - Pan de Jamón

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin this Lassy Raisin Bread! 

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