Berry Oatmeal Muffins

Happy Monday! I just did my meal plan last night, and am very excited about this week's meals. It's been almost a week since our family has gone vegan, and overall it's been a good transition. Switching to almond milk vs cow's milk has been the easiest transition for us. I'm still trying to find a good substitute for cheese, and don't know if I will ever find one. Looking back, we probably had some kind of cheese in our diet every single day, so that has been the hardest food item to stay away from. 

Was very excited when I found this muffin recipe, because it only uses fruit puree as the sweetener and I was curious how they would turn out and if the rest of my family would like them. My son's comment was they were "0aty" but he gobbled it all up, and the rest of my family never mentioned that they weren't sweet enough and seemed to thoroughly enjoy them, so I would say this was a winner recipe! I think next time I will try them with frozen blueberries. YUM!

This is what our Vegan meal plan looked like the last couple of days:

Breakfast: toasted oatmeal with roasted walnuts and cranberries, piece of fruit

Snack:  Berry Oatmeal Muffins, pretzels, popcorn

Lunch: Leftovers from last week

Dinner: One night we had whole-wheat noodles with tomato sauce (will post recipe soon) served with salad, another night we had tortillas with vegetarian re-fried beans, avocado, salsa and vegan cheese, served with tortilla chips. 

Happy Healthy Eating!! 

Enjoy!

**This recipe is adapted from Strawberrypepper blog.

 

Muffin Recipe
 Makes: 18 muffins Prep: 20 minutes  Baking Time: 20 minutes

(Printable Recipe)

2 cups old-fashioned oats
2 cups apple juice
2 ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 cup)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
 2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 cups flour (I used whole-wheat pastry)
2 cups frozen berries (I used raspberries)

           
1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Let oats soak in juice for 10 minutes.  Add mashed bananas.

2. Mix salt through flour together in a large bowl. 
3. Fold banana mixture into dry ingredients. Add frozen berries and fold in. 
4. Bake in muffin tins for 18-20 minutes. 

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Who likes to change it up?

~Add 1 tsp lemon extract and 1 lemon zested to batter to make them a lemon muffin. 

~Try different frozen fruit. Peaches would be yummy, chopped up. 
    

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