Dear Friends,

Life just goes full-throttle…until you find yourself sitting on the couch with a bag of frozen peas under your butt! Taking a spill on Michael’s deck was bad for my tailbone, but it turns out it was good for my blogging! My Saturday mornings are most always the same — get up early, make some coffee, make a quick breakfast (usually some sort of eggs in the skillet that I can cook and eat in about 10 minutes), then get to work on my weekly house cleaning.

This weekend, however, I won’t be doing much that involves being on my feet. I’m paying my boys to mow and weed-eat my yard. And aside from doing a little cooking and folding some laundry, my day is going to consist of watching The Dick Van Dyke Show, finishing an article for a local magazine, and working on this blog!

Since I’m not busy today, I decided to make something fun for breakfast. I was in the mood for muffins, so I set to work scouring my Pinterest breakfast board for recipes. I found a couple that I liked, so I blended those together for a base recipe and added my own little touches to come up with something healthy, but satisfying. I opted to blend some ground almonds and oats in with some whole wheat flour so that flour wasn’t the whole base of the muffins. I trade in the sugar for some stevia for baking, and swapped out the oil for natural, unsweetened applesauce.

Now then, for the recipe:

Guilt-Free Blueberry Lemon Muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 Cups Whole Wheat Flour
• 1/3 Cup Sliced Almonds
• 3/4 Cup Oats
• 3/4 Cup Stevia for Baking
• 2 tsp Baking Powder
• 1 tsp Baking Soda
• 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
• 1/2 Cup + 1 splash Unsweetened Almond Milk
• 1 Egg
• 1/2 Cup Unsweetened, Natural Applesauce
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 1 tsp Lemon Zest
• Juice of One Lemon
• 1 1/2 Cups of Fresh Blueberries

Directions:

1. First things first – preheat your oven to 375.
2. Then, you need to prep your almonds and oats for baking. You can buy almond and oat flour in the store, but they are unnecessarily expensive. Just toss them in a food processor and grind them yourself until they reach a thick powdery consistency. Easy, peasy!
3. Stir together your freshly ground almonds, oats and wheat flour in a bowl. Then, stir in the next 4 ingredients until well-blended.
4. In a glass measuring cup, measure out 1/2 cup of almond milk, then add another good splash, because 1/2 cup just isn’t quite enough. Add the egg, vanilla, lemon juice (first zest the lemon and set zest aside, because it’s easier to zest a lemon while it’s still whole) and applesauce, then mix well until the egg is completely beaten into the mixture.
5. Pour the liquid mixture into the powder mixture, and stir until combined.
6. Finally, gently stir in the lemon zest and blueberries
7. Line muffin tins with cupcake liners — you’ll need 18 — and spray each with a little shot of olive oil spray to keep batter from sticking and make the liners easier to remove. Fill each muffin cup with a rounded tablespoon of the muffin batter. Baking hack — fill the remaining 6 empty muffin cups with a bit of water to help the muffins bake more evenly.
8. Put in the oven and bake for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

How is that for yummy and guilt-free?! You could also easily make this vegan by trading in the egg for an egg substitute. Or you could make it a little more dense and moist by adding a dollop or two of plain Greek yogurt as well. Another option to make it a bit fluffier is to add 1/2 teaspoon or so of cream of tartar. Recipes are usually pretty flexible and can be modified to your personal tastes!

Now if you’ll excuse me…it’s time to go get dressed before my sister gets here, and enjoy my Saturday morning breakfast!

Love,
Loren