Category: Breakfast

Guilt-Free Chocolate Donuts

Published on by Loren Miller1 Comment

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A healthy, power-packed breakfast!

Makes: 12 donuts

Ingredients

  • 2/3 cups whole wheat flour
  • 2/3 cups oat flour (or just oats ground fine in a food processor)
  • 1/2 cup walnuts, ground in a food processor
  • 1/3 cup cocoa powder
  • 2 Tbs milled or ground flax seed
  • 1 Tbs Cornstarch
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 cup of shredded zucchini
  • 1 cup dark chocolate chips
  • 1/4 cup almond milk, or other non-dairy milk
  • 1 cup unsweetened applesauce
  • 3/4 cup stevia for baking
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1 tsp apple cider vinegar

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350.
  2. Combine first 9 ingredients in a large food processor (or a bowl with a hand mixer will also work well) and blend.
  3. Add zucchini and chocolate chips to the bowl.
  4. In a separate bowl, mix together all of the remaining ingredients, then pour into the food processor bowl and process until well-blended. Alternatively, mix with hand mixer for a couple of minutes.
  5. Divide mixture among 12 silicon donut molds. Bake for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean

This recipe was adapted from a zucchini bread recipe that I love. While the zucchini bread by itself was good, it could easily be made better by adding some antioxidant rich walnuts, oat flour, and ground flax. Skipping the oil and will also make the heart and arteries much happier. As for the donut molds instead of a bread pan? Well, that’s just to make it look more breakfast-like! Plus, it becomes a single-serve grab-and-go that way.

I like to pair it with some mixed fruit to get a good, well-rounded breakfast. For a little icing, you could also melt some more dark chocolate and drizzle on top. I prefer to keep the sugars as low as possible, though, so I just keep mine plain and dunk in some coffee. Soft, delicious, and gentle on your heart and your waistline!

Guilt-Free Blueberry Lemon Muffins for Our Saturday Morning Breakfast

Published on by Loren Miller5 Comments

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

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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