Once there was a busy mama and yoga teacher who realized that in her goal of always cooking healthy, delicious meals for her family that she had forgotten to bake any treats for a long long time, well since Christmas. :-). And so she magically created a little more time one busy morning, when she ought to have been doing more practical things like organizing her teaching calendar and getting her son to school right on time (he made it, thanks to Dad), and she decided to fill the kitchen with the aroma of fresh baked apples with some spice.
And she even ate one for breakfast and sipped her ginger tea and it made her morning almost as bright as the sunshine that filled the day.
Like most treats that I make, it has no refined sugar, it is dairy free and approved by the almost 8 year old. I used apples in these muffins because apples are so abundant in our Pacific Northwest through the fall and winter and I love to eat seasonally because of the benefits that seasonal foods offer us in the season in which they emerge. If you live in a different season or a different climate, do experiment with some other fruit options. Berries would be good here, as would any stone fruits or perhaps even mangoes… mmmm.
I also usually adapt all the recipes to be a little more Ayurvedic. In this one, I added in some ground ginger and ground cinnamon to the batter, to “warm” up the density of the flours so it is easier to digest and will leave you feeling full in a happy and nourishing way, v.s. heavy. Plus it has some other surprises, which add some delicious, enlivening flavor.
Scroll down for the recipe. I hope you will try it and love it as much as we did today. Kick up your feet, take a pause and enjoy one of these with a cup of warm ginger tea. It will warm you up like a hug.
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Spiced Apple Almond Muffins
Ingredients:
- 9 tbsp coconut oil, softened
- 2 large free range eggs
- 1 1/2 cups sprouted spelt flour, sifted
- 2/3 cup almond flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 to 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 to 1 tsp ground ginger
- pinch of sea salt
- 1/4 cup milk of your choice (we use home made almond milk, recipe here)
- 1/2 cup maple syrup *
- Grated zest of 1 organic, unwaxed lemon and 1/2 an organic, unwaxed orange
For the Apples:
- 2 eating apples, halved, cored and diced
- 1 1/2 tbsp coconut oil, melted
- 1 tbsp coconut sugar
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 12 hole muffin pan or line it with 12 paper liners.
- Toss diced apples in a bowl with melted coconut oil and coconut sugar. Lay the pieces in the bottom of each muffin liner.
- In a separate bowl, mix in the all the dry ingredients from the flour down to the sea salt.
- To make the muffins, cream the coconut oil with a spoonful of flour mixture, then add the eggs and beat for another minute or until the mixture is light and fluffy.
- Gently fold in the rest of the dried ingredients along with the milk, maple syrup and lemon and orange zest. The mixture can be lumpy.
- Pour the batter on top of the apples, using a spatula to help, and bake for 25 – 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center emerges clean.
- Remove from the oven and turn onto a wire rack to cool.
- Serve with a cup of warm tea.
A note on maple syrup. Pure maple syrup is wonderful in most baked treats. I love that it is both sweeter than cane sugar yet has fewer calories, but contains calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, zinc and natural antioxidants. It offers both an immune boost and provides slow release energy. I think it is one of the better natural sugars to feed our children and I like the OM foods brand dark amber syrup, which you can buy here.
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