On Sunday, when I was trying to get organized for the week, I pulled out a can of chickpeas and my food processor and decided I was going to make some healthy muffins for easy grab-and-go breakfasts or snacks. The recipe I was going to follow was for these delicious peanut butter and banana muffins that I have made before. I knew I didn’t have any bananas, but figured I could replace them with applesauce… Which it turns out that I didn’t have either… At this point I had already started putting them together, so I had to figure out how to get my blended chickpeas, oats and peanut butter to turn into muffins.
So, I’ve done my fair share of internet reading on alternative baking (gluten free, dairy free, nut free, vegan… you name it… I’ve read it…), so I understood that the banana in the muffin recipe was probably acting as a binder, an oil substitute, a source of moisture and maybe a sweetener for the recipe… Now to figure out how to replace those with what I had… For a binder, I decided to use some ground flax seed with some soy milk, because I know that can be used as an egg replacement in some recipes. For oil, I decided to just use more peanut butter. For the moisture, I added a bit more soy milk. And finally, for the sweetness, I added a touch more maple syrup. Then, because it didn’t really have a flavour other than peanut butter… I decided to add some cocoa so that they would be chocolate muffins.
In the oven they went. I was sort of expecting my concoction to totally fail, but it didn’t. In fact, they are really really delicious. Baking experiment success!
And now for the blogging fail… If I had thought about it beforehand, I could have totally taken photos of the process and had an interesting photo filled post for today about healthy (or not so healthy) alternatives that I’m experimenting with… But no, total blogging fail, I only have a picture of the muffin that I ate for breakfast this morning.
If you blog, do you just constantly photograph everything, in case it ends up being blog post worthy? How do people do this all the time?
hahaha – yay for your muffin success! I usually take pictures and plan out my recipes for the month using an editorial calendar. But sometimes I miss out on a great blog post and end up just making a second batch later on and document it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I didn’t even keep track of how much of everything I put in… Mostly because I rarely measure things when I’m baking… I have a general idea of how much a teaspoon is, or a cup, or whatever… and so I just wing-it. So, I don’t think I’ll be able to accurately recreate these muffins… I guess I would have to get better with that if I were to actually post a recipe, eh? 🙂
LikeLike
I do that all the time, I think before or after that it would be a good post but then now pictures because I just forget. Well maybe one day I will get better at it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We can hope we get better, right? I’ll let you know if I come up with any genius ways not to forget. 🙂
LikeLike
Looks delicious, never thought about using chickpeas in a muffin recipe – which is surprising since Sarah and I go through at least 1 2KG bag of dry chickpeas every week (I make hummus for lunches and we use roasted chickpeas in place of croutons for our salads). Can you share a link to the recipe you used?
LikeLiked by 1 person
For sure, the original recipe comes from Chocolate Covered Katie. It isn’t chocolate, but it would probably just require some cocoa and a bit of extra liquid to make it work without all the substitutions that I played with in my version.
http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2016/04/04/flourless-blender-muffins-banana-vegan/
I don’t use dried chickpeas ever, but that might be a more frugal way of doing it. Especially since the cans don’t seem to go on sale as much as I feel like they used to.
LikeLike
Haha! Always love to explore in the kitchen! Looks so good though 🙂 I would love if you could check out my blog too and maybe follow me! I’m planning on doing more baking posts on it too! Thank you! x 🙂
My blog: splashofhappinesssite.wordpress.com/
LikeLiked by 1 person
A fellow kitchen explorer, nice! I will definitely come check out your blog! Thanks for stopping by mine! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have that problem all the time! I just started my blog and I’m not quite used to getting photos during things I always end up with a final photo and the story to go with it, but then I don’t want to post it because I feel like I let people down by not having pictures lol. If you feel like checking out my blog, I would be very happy .http://missking905.wixsite.com/abettermeblog
I like your blog 🙂 It is nice to see that there is other people out there who are using the internet to share their goals.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi! I like the name of your blog! 😉
I am no expert, but I’d say post your stories without the photos. As much as I try myself to put photos up, I know that the real content is in the personal story, so just post your stories, even without the photos! 🙂
LikeLike