Having some cooking gums left from making my gum drop cake ( a replacement for  traditional Christmas cake), I decided to make my polka dot banana muffins pg. 73  in Muffins From the Heart specialty section. This is a nice Christmas morning muffin.

Polka Dot Muffins

2 1/2 cups flour

4 tsp. baking powder

1 cup baking gums  cut in half  ( 1 -8 oz. pkg.)  *Do not use black gums.

1/2 cup washed and dried raisins (goldden raisins are nice but regular raisins will do.)

1/4 cup chopped nuts of your choice

1/2 cup unsweetened orange juice

1/2 liquid honey

1/3 cup canola oil

3 large eggs

1/2 cup mashed, ripe banana

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together flour and baking powder. Stir in gums, raisins and nuts.

Beat together juice, honey, oil and eggs. Mash banana  and add to liquid ingredients, stirring until blended. 

Add dry ingredients, mixing only until there is no longer any flour visible.

Fill mufffin liners 3/4 full and bake until tester comes out clean. Time depends on size of muffin, your oven etc. As with all muffins,  I like these muffins served warm.

Merry munching! Hope you enjoy this muffin with a difference.

Shirley

When it comes to eating only food that is grown within a 100 mile radius from where you live, certain foods can present a challenge.  Because I live in a cooler climate, I unfortunately don’t have foods that grow in more southerly locations eg. lemons.

This is where creative problem solving is needed. My friends who took on the 100 mile diet challenge replaced rhubarb juice when using a recipe requiring a little tartness. They simply cooked the rhubarb, then drained the juice off and continued with the recipe. Usually not a lot of lemon juice is called for in a recipe but leaving it out is not really an option as the end product will be missing that punch that lemon gives. In this case, rhubarb juice is used for its pucker power.

Have you come up with some creative solutions to replacing ingredients that don’t grow within a 100 miles from where you live?  We’d love to hear from you.

As you can see from last week’s recipe, there are many different way to personalize my muffin recipes according to your particular dietary requirements.

Just a word of clarification.  Specific instructions for each variation are not included on each recipe page in the book as it is just too much information as well as clutter for those especially who just want to make a regular basic muffin. The information on last weeks blog was just to illustrate my point. The info there and additional information for a particular variation is culminated in  specific sections of the book eg. gluten-free flour choices as well as tips on baking gluten-free etc.

Did you notice that in this recipe, (as is true of other recipes in Muffins From the Heart), no salt has been added?  Having said that, leavers are a source of sodium we don’t often consider.  In the back of my book  I suggest using a low-sodium baking powder as it contains 1 mg. of sodium  per tsp.compares to the 40 mg. per tsp. in regular baking soda.

Did you also notice there is no milk in this recipe? Many of the recipes in this book are dairy-free. For those recipes that do have some dairy, there are multiple dairy replacements at the back of the book to choose from.

All these variations hopefully adds to the use of the book  as I know of people with different family members having specific diet issues or those  individual with multiple issues to cope with eg. a diabetic also requiring a gluten-free diet. (Now that is a tough challenge!)

Having said that, each issue is unique and a study it’s own. And things change over time - new techniques, new ingredients. Keep posted for this and more…. I welcome your input. 

Keep smiling .

Edible Options

Maybe now you can better understand how I could identify with Julie with her testing count-down in the movie Julie and Julia.:)