Test Kitchen Tuesday

For the next couple of weeks, while I heal from my little broken kneecap incident,  I’m bringing you return recipes from days gone by on this blog, when the only people reading were…well, I don’t know who was actually reading. The thing about starting a blog is that you have to just start, whether or not you have an audience or not.

It’s almost back to school time, so I thought I’d share a sneaky on-the-go breakfast with you this week.

Your kids (or spouse) will never know there are lentils in these muffins, and, you can feel good about sending them along with a moist muffin that provides protein, fiber, and quite a few vitamins and minerals. This muffin will actually keep them full, instead of providing a huge sugar spike and then crash. There is no coffee shop muffin that can compete with this!

If you want to speed up the process a little, you can get pre-steamed lentils at Trader Joe’s (if you have one) for a very reasonable price. Look in the refrigerator section next to the bagged salads and prepared veggies for the lentils. And, you can get sweet potatoes in the frozen section of Whole Foods from Stahlbush Farms. It is much cheaper to buy a sweet potato whole and prepare it, but, if time is of the essence, those frozen sweets can come in handy.

Have a good week, and thanks for hanging with me as I work through the healing process!

Apple Lentil Muffins

Print this Recipe!

Makes: 6 jumbo or 12 regular muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 cups white whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (you could also add some ground nutmeg and ginger here – perhaps 1/4 teaspoon of each)
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup cooked lentils
• 1 sweet potato
• 1 peeled chopped apple
• 1 pureed apple with peel intact
• 1 cup nonfat milk

Method:

• Preheat oven to 350 F
• Add dry ingredients to a large bowl and combine
• Wash and chop sweet potato (with skin intact) and microwave in a small bowl in about a cup of water for 3 minutes
• Wash and chop two apples, separately. Put one apple with peel on into your Ninja blender or food processor bowl, and add the other, peeled chopped apple to the dry ingredients.
• Add lentils, cooked sweet potato, and milk to the Ninja blender or food processor along with the apple, and blend until well combined
• Mix wet ingredients with dry, being careful not to over-mix
• Fill prepared muffin tins and bake for 40-45 minutes for jumbo muffins or 20-25 minutes for regular, until an inserted toothpick comes out clean

Nutrition:

For jumbo muffins.