Making the perfect oatmeal muffin has been quite a challenge for me.
I want it to have a little texture, but not be too coarse. I tried several variations on my original recipe, each one being disappointing for different reasons: Too sweet, too dense, or too rough. I felt like Goldilocks raiding the bears’ muffin stash!
Finally I’ve struck my ideal: fluffy, oaty, and not-too-sweet. Perfect with jam for dessert or with peanut butter for a snack at work. Pulsing the oats in the blender at the beginning gives these muffins a finer texture without sacrificing fibre or oat flavour.
These are also relatively high in protein, but aren’t too calorie-dense. For those of you who are into that sort of thing, one muffin has approximately 140 calories, 6g fat, 4g protein, and 5g sugar. Compare that to a Nature Valley trail mix bar, which has 140 calories, 4g fat, 2g protein, and 12g sugar. But enough about nutrition, as I don’t purport to be a healthy living blog, just a blog with delicious, wannabe-vegan recipes.
A few more technical notes about these muffins:
1. Even with the nutritional info listed above, these are lower fat than traditional muffins. I have found that muffin recipes with less than 1/4 c fat will stick to paper liners once they have cooled, so I would recommend just spraying your tin and pouring in the batter directly.
2. These muffins do have a coconut aroma, which is how I can get away with so little sugar. I know at least one person who hates coconut (hi Lia!), and have subbed out coconut oil for canola or olive oil in other recipes with a fair amount of success. Since canola doesn’t have the same melting point as coconut oil, I would recommend 1 Tbsp of melted margarine of butter and 2 Tbsp of liquid oil. If you do this you may wish to up the white sugar content by 1-2 Tbsp.
3. You really do want to stir these muffins more than most recipes. The oatmeal needs to hydrate before baking, and if you stir just until mixed/slightly lumpy like with traditional muffins, you will get very uneven batter and resultantly clumpy muffins.
OK, long spiel aside, here we go:
Goldilocks oatmeal muffins – An Agent Minty original recipe
Ingredients:
- 1 cup rolled oats (not instant), pulsed in the food processor until fine
- 3/4 cup white flour
- 2 Tbsp brown rice protein powder (if you don’t have protein powder, use more almond meal)
- 2 Tbsp almond meal
- 1 Tbsp ground flaxseed
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 Tbsp white sugar
- 2 Tbsp packed brown sugar
- 2 Tbsp lemon juice
- 1 cup almond milk or other milk of your choice
- 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
- 1/4 cup water
- 3 Tbsp melted coconut oil
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp almond extract
Instructions:
- Pulse oats in a blender.
- Add all other dry ingredients and mix well.
- In a separate bowl, combine lemon juice and milk, stirring until the milk curdles.
- Microwave for about 30 seconds so that the milk mixture is not very cold. Otherwise the coconut oil will harden when added.
- Add remaining liquids, stirring briefly.
- Pour liquid mix onto the dry ingredients.
- Stir gently but thoroughly until no dry lumps remain and the batter is smooth.
- Sit at room temperature for 10-20 minutes. Meanwhile, heat oven to 400F.
- Divide batter between greased muffin tins.
- Bake in centre of oven, rotating once, for 18 minutes. If you prefer muffins that are crispy on the outside, bake for 20 minutes.