Muffins! [Blueberry Oatmeal with Kefir]

I love muffins. They're fun to make and delicious to eat. The only thing I don't like about muffins is cleaning the muffin pan. I have a stoneware muffin pan which makes great muffins but it has to be hand-washed and it's a pain in the rear. Although it's slightly embarrassing to admit, the muffin pan often sits in the sink for a couple days after I make muffins because I hate cleaning it so much. Regardless, this does not deter me from baking these little treasures on a regular basis. Last week I tried a new recipe: Blueberry Oatmeal with Kefir and this morning I made my husband's favourite, Banana Soy with Chocolate Chips. The recipe for the oatmeal muffins is below for your reading and/or baking pleasure, and the recipe for the banana muffins will be posted soon!

Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins with Kefir

I've been hearing a lot about kefir lately and I think I'd like to try growing my own at home. However, I decided I should try it first, so I bought it for the first time a few weeks ago. Of course, as these things go, it then sat in my fridge until nearly its expiration date. So I needed to do something with it and thought: muffins! I imagine that baking it takes away some of its nutritional/beneficial qualities, but it sure makes great muffins. I used this recipe as my starting point, but here is exactly what I did:

Ingredients

1 cup oats

1 cup kefir

1 cup spelt flour

1/4 cup flaxseed meal

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp vinegar

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup olive oil, vegetable oil, or melted butter

1/4 cup apple sauce

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen

Method

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Combine the oats with the kefir in a large bowl and set aside. If you are using anything other than quick oats, you should soak them for at least 10 minutes. (I used quick oats and the muffins turned out great, but I'd like to try them with a more nutritious option, like steel cut oats.)

In a medium bowl, combine flour, flaxseed meal, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon. (I like a bit more salt in my muffins to help bring out the flavours, but if you are sodium conscious, you can reduce the amount to half a teaspoon.)

Once the oats have soaked for an appropriate amount of time, add the vinegar, egg, brown sugar, oil or butter, applesauce, and vanilla to the oats and kefir mixture. If adding vinegar seems odd to you, I totally understand, because I was confused about that as well (it's an ingredient in the recipe I used as a starting point), and the online research I did to find out why produced no results. If you know why, please fill me in! Whatever the case, the finished muffins had no vinegary smell or taste so I'd add it again, not knowing what would change if I didn't. I used regular vinegar, but apparently apple cider vinegar is a good option as well. Also, if you don't have applesauce, just use all oil or butter. I often buy unsweetened Mott's Fruitsations, so for this recipe I used the blueberry one - seemed appropriate. Finally, I like the flavour that vanilla adds to muffins - makes them a bit more cake-like - but if you don't prefer that, you can skip the vanilla all together.

When you have the wet and dry ingredients prepared separately, add your fresh or frozen blueberries to the dry ingredients and stir gently to coat them. Immediately add the wet ingredients (especially important if you're using frozen blueberries to prevent them from bleeding colour into the batter) and fold ingredients together until just combined. Lumpy batter is fine - actually preferable - and over-stirring muffin batter will affect the fluffiness of the finished muffins.

Now you can scoop your batter into 12 prepared muffins cups and bake for 18-20 minutes. Enjoy hot with some butter or let them cool first and eat them whole. They are delicious either way and freeze very well too. I think this may be my new favourite oatmeal blueberry muffin recipe.