I’ve been asked twice this week for healthy choices when it’s too hot to cook.
These are my answer. Quick, inexpensive, genuinely nourishing, and they travel — into a lunchbox, a handbag, or the car on the way to work. Make a batch on Sunday and breakfast is handled.
The best part is how forgiving they are. Almost every ingredient has an alternative, so you can make them with what you already have rather than with what a recipe insists on.
What you need
- 1 cup oats — or gluten-free oats, or half oats and half bran flakes, or muesli
- ½ cup milk — or almond milk, kefir, or yoghurt
- 1 cup flour — or spelt, gluten-free, or wholewheat
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp cinnamon
- ¾ cup maple syrup — or honey, xylitol, sugar, or apple sauce
- ¼ cup butter — or any nut butter
- 2 eggs, lightly beaten
Optional, and this is where they become yours: nuts, frozen berries, raisins, chocolate-covered cranberries, chopped banana, or stewed apple.
How to make them
- Grease your muffin tray.
- Mix the oats and the milk together and let them stand for at least five minutes — don’t skip this, it’s what makes them tender.
- In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.
- Stir the sweetener, butter and beaten eggs into the oat mixture.
- Add the wet mixture to the flour mixture and stir only until lumpy. Over-mixing gives you rubbery muffins.
- Fold in whichever optional extras you’re using.
- Fill the cups three-quarters full and bake at 200°C — 15 to 18 minutes for small muffins, 35 to 40 minutes for large ones.
One change I’ve made since
These days I leave out the added sweetener altogether and use stewed apples instead. The fruit does the work, and you skip the sugar spike that undoes a good breakfast before the morning has properly started.
That’s the whole point of them, really. A breakfast that holds you until lunch, instead of one that has you hunting for something at ten o’clock.
Make them once and you’ll stop needing the recipe.