Baby Adventure (who I shouldn’t call “Baby” anymore – he is TWO now!) had another bad week last week with a painful ear infection. If you have a child of your own who has had such infections, or if you are prone to them yourself, then you know they are painful and make even the sweetest kid turn into an sick demon-child. Aside from being supremely moody, Adventure, who is normally a super-good eater, suddenly didn’t want to eat anything aside from pretzels or crackers… or the sweet coffee cake my mom sent home with us last week.
Desperate to get something resembling healthy food into him, I went through the cupboards then popped over to allrecipes.com and found this recipe for “Toddler Muffins” for which I had almost all the ingredients. (Mr. Penny Pincher: ”Are they made from real toddlers?”)
The muffins were a big hit, far better (IMO) than last week’s granola bars (which Adventure also liked.) Here is the recipe as I made it, with my changes highlighted. Feel free to refer to the link above for the original recipe, and to see more reviews.
"Toddler Muffins"
TODDLER MUFFINS (Original Recipe by Lori via allrecipes.com)
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup virgin coconut oil
1/2 cup brown sugar, or to taste
2 large bananas, mashed*
1 (4.5 ounce) jar baby food squash**
2 carrots, grated***
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup quick-cook (uncooked) oatmeal
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup raisins
1 apple, cut into slices about 1/8 inch thick, then roughly chopped
Directions: Preheat an oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Grease 12 to 18 standard muffin cups.
In a mixing bowl, cream together the butter, coconut oil and brown sugar until smooth. Mix in the mashed bananas, squash, carrots, and eggs. Stir in the flour, oat bran, baking soda, pumpkin pie spice, raisins and salt until just combined. Spoon the batter equally into the prepared muffin cups.
Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 15 minutes. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes before removing to cool completely on a wire rack. Store at room temperature for up to two days, or freeze.
* I always have overripe bananas on hand – whenever they start going too brown to eat, I chuck them in the freezer!
** I imagine that equal parts applesauce would work just as well.
*** I used a coarse hand-grater for the carrots (because I was too lazy to lug out the food processor for two measly carrots!) If you want to make mini-muffins, I would suggest grating the carrots more finely to allow for the shorter cooking time – nothing like crunchy raw carrot shreds in your breakfast muffin!
Next time I might add… grated zucchini, a scoop of protein powder, nuts or seeds.
More on that in future posts as well.
