Somehow I accidentally baked a batch of muffins. These muffins weren’t accidental in the sense that they were intended to be something else but came out as muffins. These muffins were accidental in that I was supposed to be unpacking boxes and somehow found myself mixing up a batch of muffins instead. How did that happen? It is kind of like If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. It started when I turned on the oven (the first time in my new apartment) to bake a sweet potato to feed the baby over Shabbat. A whole oven seemed like a lot of space for one small sweet potato. And the new seven grain hot cereal I had bought earlier in the day had a muffin recipe on the back that caught my eye. And I had other new ingredients, like coconut milk yogurt, that I wanted to experiment with. And so, while the baby slept I made muffins instead of unpacking progress. And baked apples. Oops.

These muffins are 100% whole grain. I actually prefer muffins with a whole grain taste to them. They fill me up better, and don’t leave me feeling like I had a cupcake for snack. (Not that there is anything wrong with that, it just isn’t motivational on my way to the gym.) In trying to keep the glycemic index lower I used all agave instead of other forms of sweeteners, and they came out quite well. The muffins did not rise at all in the oven, so I expected them to taste like dense hockey pucks but they had a surprisingly pleasant texture, not too dense at all with a nice crumb.

The coconut milk yogurt worked beautifully in this recipe. When I tasted it plain before adding it to the recipe the yogurt had a distinctly coconut-y flavor, so I was not sure what the final muffins would taste like. It turned out that the coconut flavor was not identifiable at all once the muffins were baked, so I would highly recommend using this product as a non-dairy yogurt substitute in baking (especially also trying to avoid soy). I used the plain variety, but I imagine the other flavors would be good in baking as well. Because I thought the coconut flavor would come through more strongly I didn’t add any other additions or spices to the muffins. As a result I thought it was a good base recipe but rather bland. I will certainly be making variations of these muffins again and again, they are the perfect pre-workout snack with a string cheese. Plus, they are a good source of whole grains without added sugar for my little one, more toddler than baby these days.

The next variation I am planning on trying is a spiced gingerbread version. Stay tuned.