Customizable Muffins
1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 egg
1 1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 tsp. McCormick Vanilla Butter & Nut extract
1 scoop ground flax seed
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Mix all dry ingredients (flours, sugar, baking powder, flax seed, salt) together. Stir all wet ingredients (egg, milk, oil, extract) together. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and blend until just barely combined. Add your choice of ingredients (see list below). Pour into paper or foil-lined muffins tins and bake for about 20 minutes. This only makes 12 muffins, but it doubles easily.
Possible Stir-in Ingredients:
Chopped Banana
Chopped Apple
Chopped Nuts: Pecans, Almonds, Cashews (maybe even pine nuts?)
Chopped Dried Fruit: Raisins, Apricots, Cherries, or Cranberries (soaked beforehand in a little water to soften them, if you have time)
Poppy seeds
Grated citrus peel
Cinnamon
Blueberries or cranberries (fresh or frozen, thawed)
Peanut butter
Chocolate Chips (regular or mini-sized) or mini M & Ms
Granola
Shredded Coconut
Jelly or Jam (fill cup halfway with batter, spoon in a dollop of jam and then cover with more batter for a jam filling, or put a dollop on the very top of the batter before baking)
This batch didn’t turn out particularly picturesque, but they were quite tasty. Usually when I make these with kids, I give each kid a smallish mixing bowl with some batter in it and let them add their own ingredients before pouring their completed batter into the muffin cups. But when I made these with Boy and Girl and 2/3 of their cousins today (boy cousin C was sick today and couldn’t come), the kids had expressed some interest in making more than just one combination of ingredients and I had some cute heart-shaped disposable foil muffin cups that I wanted to use up, so I poured a bit of batter in each foil cup and then let the kids stir it together before baking. Funny thing is, they forgot about different flavors and make each of theirs the same (each kid made 4 muffins), so if I do this again, I will go back to the original method. I highly recommend coming up with some way (Post-Its, sticker labels) to mark which tins belong to which child if you are making these with a group of kiddos.
A word on ingredients and practicality:
You’ll need to strike your own balance on ingredient prep for these muffins. It’s a pain to drag EVERYTHING out of your pantry and fridge to set it up for the kids to browse through (I usually put each ingredient in a small bowl with a soup spoon to pour it into the batter with), BUT I do find that they are more likely to add more of the healthy ingredients if there are more there for them to choose from. If there are only 1 or 2 ingredients, they’ll have a tendency to just use banana and chocolate chips, but if there’s a smorgasbord, I find that the kids are more likely to try a greater variety of combinations (and probably end up with a healthier muffin). Know your audience and prepare accordingly. Don’t spend 10 minutes grating orange peel if you know that no one will use it.
Some yummy combo suggestions:
Peanut butter and banana
Peanut butter and jelly (natch)
Lemon peel and poppy seed
Orange peel and cranberries
Blueberry and banana
Blueberry and lemon peel
Peanut butter and chocolate chip
Banana and Nuts
Apple, Cinnamon and Nuts
Cousin J and Boy
Cousin A and Girl