Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Plantain Pumpkin Muffins

I'm back? Sorry to have lost focus for six months or so. Isn't it funny how life interferes with best laid plans and all that stuff? Or maybe not funny, but tragic. Or just humdrum. I don't know. I haven't been feeling too creative when it comes to cooking and baking these days because my kids have dug into their preferences and it is worse than pulling teeth (which I had to do to my older son last month due to a dangling dentifrice) to get them to try anything different. However, the kids actually liked these! WOW! 

I have a couple of paleo blogs that I follow as three of four residents in our household are gluten-free. My husband is the lone hold out declaring Raisin Bran to be his favorite thing in the world. He's an adult, so I can't really force him to go paleo, or even gluten-free, but he has promised me that he will cheerfully eat what is provided to him in our home, as long as the Raisin Bran is available at breakfast. So I've been trying to bake paleo treats and goodies for the home from the recipes. Some paleo bloggers are using plantains in lieu of nut flours. My experiences with nut flour muffins are okay at best. They can be soggy. So I decided to create a muffin recipe using plantains as the base. These are not low carb because plantains are starchy.



Chocolate Chip Plantain Pumpkin Muffins



Ingredients: 

    •  2 medium green plantains, peeled and quartered*

  • 1 can pumpkin puree
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
  • 1/3 cup Maple Syrup
  • 1 Tbsp Vanilla Extract
  • 2 tsp Baking Soda
  • 1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp ground ginger
  • 1 tsp ground nutmeg
  •  1/2 tsp salt



Mix in separately:
◦    1/3 cup coconut flour

Pulse in:
    ½-1 cup chocolate chips

Sprinkle on:

◦    Maple Sugar

Detailed Instructions: 
1. Preheat the oven to 400F.
2. Put initial ingredients into a food processor, plantains on the bottom, and run until the plantains are pureed (1-2 minutes). Green plantains take a long time to break up in the processor because they are so starchy. Don't be afraid to let it run for a while.
3. Add the coconut flour and run briefly (30 seconds) to mix it in. Wait 2-3 minutes to allow the coconut flour to absorb moisture. Now pulse in chocolate chips.
4. Scoop spoonfuls of the mixture into a greased muffin tin. The muffin wholes can be pretty full. Bake for 30 minutes.
5. Sprinkle a small spoonful of maple sugar on each muffin. This will give it a little extra sweetness.
6. Take out muffins as soon as the top looks done. (They are done if the top looks firm and dry and doesn’t give too much as you press on it.) The muffins are very moist, so using a toothpick to test them won’t work.
7. After cooling for 5 minutes in the muffin pan, take them out and cool them on a rack.
8. Makes 12 muffins, try not too eat too many at once.

*When choosing plantains, choose very green, hard, medium ones. I once found some plantains at the supermarket that were longer than my forearms. They were so big they were like clubs. Go for the medium ones. The best way to peel plantains is to cut them in quarters and then gently peel them. These suckers are starchy, so it's not easy peeling like a ripe banana. DON'T try to eat plantains raw. YUCK, YUCK, YUCK!