Whole Wheat Spiced Sweet Potato Muffins

This week is AP testing and since my teachers are therefore not giving any work and I don't really plan on studying, I have more time when I get home to cook and bake. I literally sat in the testing room for an hour after I took one of my exams waiting for the time to be up that I could leave. The people around me probably thought I was impressively fast, but I actually just ran out o things to say on the free response section. (That's not too good of a sign now is it...)

Spiced sweet potato muffin with a brown sugar, oat, and almond topping.

Anyways, I had some sweet potato puree left from the brownie recipe, so I needed to come up with another recipe so I wouldn't waste it. I decided to make muffins. You can make them in any size you want, but I love to make mini muffins since you can easily take one to go  and pop in your mouth.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

All the topping ingredients before being mixed.

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ cup brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cup sweet potato puree

½ cup milk

2 eggs

Topping-

¼ cup oatmeal

3 tablespoons brown sugar

¼ cup almonds

½ teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a muffin pan well.

In a large bowl, mix together the sweet potato, milk, brown sugar, and eggs. Add in the vanilla and other spices and the baking soda and baking powder. Gradually add in the whole wheat pastry flower. Once all the ingredients are well combined, pour the batter into the greased muffin tins until each is about ¾ full.

In a separate bowl, combine the ¼ cup oatmeal, 3 tablespoons brown sugar, ¼ cup almonds, and ½ teaspoon cinnamon. You can either chop the almonds and then just stir all the ingredients together, or put all the ingredients into a food processor to create a more homogenous mixture.

Sprinkle this “topping” on top of the unbaked muffins.

Now, place the muffins in the oven for 11-13 minutes.

Remove the oven and wait until cooled before removing from tin.

My sweet potato creations, all from one can of puree.

Chocolate Chip Muffins

Tomorrow morning some of my friends and I are leaving for senior spring break to Punta Cana! We are all very excited, except for the fact that we have to leave at 5 in the morning. This leaves no time for a real breakfast, so I thought I could make some nice muffins for us to take with us in the car ride to the airport to snack on.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

2 cups flour

1/3 cup light brown sugar

1/3 cup sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup milk

¼ cup sour cream

½ cup butter melted and cooled

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 ½ cups semi sweet chocolate chips

I might have filled these
up a tad too much...

Directions

Heat oven to 400 degrees and heavily a muffin tin or line with baking cups. In one bowl, combine the flour, brown and white sugar, cinnamon baking powder, chocolate chips, and salt. In another bowl, combine the milk, egg, butter, and sour cream until well blended. Slowly add in the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients until the whole mixture is well mixed. Finally fold in the chocolate chips.

Fill each muffin tin until its about ¾ of the way full and place the muffins in the oven for 18-22 minutes (until an inserted toothpick comes out clean).

If possible, serve while they are still nice and warm, but don’t burn yourself while you remove them from their tins!

Whole Wheat Cinnamon Apple Bread

Granny smith apples are my favorite, but I am super picky about them. Because I’m so picky, we had some leftover apples in the kitchen that didn’t quite meet my strict specifications. Though I didn’t think they looked good enough to eat plain, I thought they would be perfect to put in a healthy bread recipe. With this in mind I came up with a recipe for semi-whole wheat apple cinnamon bread. Sprinkling the brown sugar on top just adds a perfect sweet touch.

Ingredients:

1 cup whole what flour

¾ cup all-purpose flour

½ cup oats

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ cup unsalted room temperature butter

1/3 cup agave

¼ plus ¼ cup drown sugar

1 egg

1 cup Greek yogurt

2 large peeled and cored apples, coarsely chopped

Directions:

Preheat Oven to 350°F. Grease a 9.25x5.25x2.75 inch pan and set it aside. In a large bowl, mix together the butter and add the granulated sugar and ¼ cup of the brown sugar. Beat until fluffy and then add the egg and the Greek yogurt. Stir in the dry ingredients (flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon), and fold in the apple chunks.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and sprinkle the last ¼ cup of brown sugar on top.

Bake for 55-65 minutes and cool before slicing.

You could also place the batter into muffin tins, but obviously the cooking tie would be less so insert a toothpick to check. When the inserted toothpick comes out clean, you know that they are ready to take out of the oven.

Didn't wait enough time to slice woops!
That's what happens when you're too eager to eat...

Whole Wheat Banana Bread & Muffins

So Dad wasn’t very happy with me the other day (not like I did anything wrong- jk love you daddy if you’re reading this!). To make him happy I decided to make his favorite whole what banana bread. He’s not big into cookies and cupcakes, but he loves his banana bread recipe because there is enough sweetness while it’s still decently healthy. The recipe is actually from my grandmother who’s a health nut in Florida, so thanks Nona!

I actually doubled the recipe this time and used half of the batter for bread, and half for muffins

Recipe:

Ingredients:

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

½ cup butter

½ cup sour cream

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 cup (basically 2 whole) bananas

1 2/3 cups whole wheat pastry flour

½ cup pecans

 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 F.

In a large bowl, beat eggs sugar and butter together and mix well. Stir in bananas, sour cream, and vanilla. Stir in flour, nutmeg, baking soda and salt. Chop pecans and then add them to the batter and blend them in.

Grease and flour either a 9x5x3 inch loaf pan or muffin tine. Fill the loaf pan with all the batter or fill the individual muffin cups ¾ of the way full.

If making a regular loaf, bake the bread for 60 minutes or bake the muffins until an inserted toothpick comes in clean (you will obviously need to bake larger muffins for more time, I needed to bake mine for about 15 minutes). If you are making muffins, make sure that you fill cups that are not filled with batter with water in order to prevent the cups from burning.

Remove from oven and let cool before slicing.

I slid a knife around the edges to make it easier to take out
the muffins from the tin.