Chewy Vegan Banana Nut Muffins

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I am not a vegan, however, I have this fascination with vegan baking. Mostly, it’s a fascination with substitution, and seeing what I can get away with to make something tasty, yet also nearly healthy. My primary goal is to make yummy treats that are lower in refined sugars, higher in fiber and lower in fat than their conventional cousins. Right now, I’m just playing with making my own recipes. Below is a recipe I recently made. The muffins turned out beautiful, though they are on the dense and chewy side. The nuts should help with the chewiness, by offering some texture difference. They also increase the protein, which I often need to balance out any carbs. Please let me know if you try this recipe, and how it works for you!

Chewy Vegan Banana Nut Muffins

  • 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup wheat germ
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 cup almond milk
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 2 bananas, pureed
  • 1/4 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)

Preparation

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 350°F. Oil and flour three mini muffin pans or line with paper liners. Whisk flour and wheat germ, baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt, and baking soda in medium bowl. Whisk almond milk and vanilla in small bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat sugar and banana puree in large bowl to blend. Beat well after each addition until mixture is evenly mixed, occasionally scraping down sides of bowl. Beat in dry ingredients in 3 additions alternately with almond milk mixture in 2 additions. Mix just until blended. Mix in nuts. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups by generous tablespoonfuls.

Bake muffins until tester inserted into center comes out clean, 23-25 minutes. Cool in pans 5 minutes. Remove muffins from pans and cool on rack.

Centering – Ceramics

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Last week I hit a milestone – 50 lbs of clay have been turned into pots (with some loss during the process) since I started class this quarter. Time has flown buy so quickly since March. This means I’ve used about 75 lbs of clay this year. I just bought another 25 lb bag (Seattle Pottery Supply, Pine Lake Red) and last week a friend gifted me about 7.5 lbs of porcelain to try out.

Yesterday, before dipping into my new bag of clay, I sat down to throw porcelain for the first time. I hear a lot of negative things about porcelain for the beginner. It’s fine, it’s temperamental, even if you do throw it, it may crack. All I can say is that I threw off the hump and ended up with 5 cups and one bowl, with very little left over. It was a dream to work with, and I can only hope they’ll survive the drying to get into the bisque kiln.

The downside of success with throwing is that it leaves a lot of pieces to glaze, and I’m getting rather tired of the shop glazes. I mixed up two glazes from recipe a few weeks ago. One called Woo’s Blue and another called Lipstick Purple. I have them on test tiles, and I look forward to seeing how they turn out.

The other downside is that I’m working in a large studio, with a lot of students. That means that the kiln firings are not always on the schedule I want them to be on. I only vaguely know how to run the old, manual bisque kiln. After this experience, I dream of having my own wheel and kiln – though I would sorely miss the community that I work with at my school. It’s a beautiful blend of young and old, new and experienced.

I need to take pictures of the 20+ pots I’ve created this quarter. To say the least, I’ve been keeping myself busy between running and ceramics, not to mention trying to just work on other individual projects, like learning content management systems and becoming even more technically proficient.

Easy Running – Is this training?

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Yesterday I did a long slow run, though because my Garmin Forerunner 405CX was uncharged (oops!), I ended up getting out my old Polar F11 and Nike + SportBand to do my run. This meant doing a lot of manual entry into the Garmin system. This also meant that I was missing some data, like elevation change and being able to see graphs of minute-by-minute pace vs. heart rate vs. elevation. Frankly, I’m not sure if I truly understand those graphs, but they’re neat to have.

As far as my runs last week, I stayed pretty regularly at a 12 min/mi pace. My long, slow run yesterday ended up at 11:37 min/mi though, I have to admit my heart rate edged more towards 145 bpm. I’m a little disheartened that I’m not running as consistently fast as I was when I was overtraining, or when I was edging towards overtraining. Now I’m also even more skeptical about my ability to run a full marathon in August. I know that the point is to finish, but MY point is to RUN. I want to RUN all of a 5K (can do), I want to RUN a 10K (will do!) – until I get the 10K down, I’m skeptical about jumping all the way to a marathon without sincerely giving my all to a 1/2 marathon. And maybe that’s not this year – maybe that’s next year.

I’m running three days a week, and doing two days of strength training. I have yet to get back on the yoga bandwagon, but I’m hoping that if I enroll in a class, that would give me the energy to get back into it.

Finally, a shout-out to Emily, who competed in yet another triathlon!

Bookmarks for May 12th through May 13th

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These are my shared links for May 12th through May 13th:

Extreme Running – NY Times Article

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Mark Bittman (author of our household’s favorite cookbook, How to Cook Everything ) has a story in the NY Times about ultramarathoner Scott Jurek. Not only is Scott Jurek a man who runs crazy distances, he also is a vegan.

I have no intention of becoming vegan, though I do have the intention to clean up my diet more than it is today. I already eat a lot of fresh, local foods, and most of our meat and dairy products come from local, organic and humane sources. I’m trying to limit my overall consumption of meat and dairy, to make other foods more of a staple of my diet. I see vegan as being an unsustainable ideal when done as it is done by most vegans I know (relying on heavily processed, Big Ag foods and petrochemicals). One of the things that exercise makes me ravenous for is protein and fat, which I usually get from meat and protein. I don’t know if I’m not eating the right plant substances when I get that need, but it seems that nothing else satisfies.

Anyway, I digress. Check out Mark Bittman’s article Diet and Exercise to the Extremes. It’s now time for my short and fast run!