I saved quite a few of them through the years. I still use some of the recipes that I gleaned from them, so all was not lost! 

As I said, this recipe came from a Robin Hood Flour one. Baking Festival Recipes was the title.  There are 27 pretty tasty recipes for cakes, cookies, muffins, etc. in it.

 You begin by soaking some old fashioned oats in milk. I always use whole milk for my baking unless otherwise specified. 

Old fashioned oats are the large flake oats. Don't be tempted to use instant oats. They will no have the right consistency. You want an oat with some bite to it.  Instan oats would become far too gummy.

 Using the whole oats gives you a muffin with plenty of lovely wholesome texture. Oats are very good for you and are filled with fibre and iron and are good for your heart.

The chopped orange gets stirred into the soaked oats, along with an egg, some brown sugar and melted butter.  There is also plenty of chopped dates in the mix.  I adore dates.

 They have a lovely sticky toffee flavour.  Dates are actually what makes sticky toffee cake so moist and delicious. I love to use dates in my baking and always have a bag or two in the store cupboard.

They are wonderful in cakes and bakes.  I love to make date slices, and of course they work beautifully in muffins such as these ones I am sharing today.  Little sticky hints of caramel to go along with the tart orange flavours.

When I was living down South I sometimes went into London to the Borough Market. I don't know what you couldn't get at the Borough Market.

It was filled with stalls selling everything from soup to nuts! I remember one time buying these lush chocolate covered dates.  I still think about them.  Taste memories are some of the best kinds of memories.

I had loved it as a child and they had stopped making it. I was 21 when I was pregnant for Eileen and I am 65 now.  That is a long time to have a craving for something! 

Taste memories. They only get better with time. Either that or we crave them more. One way or the other most of them will never be fulfilled.  Now back to the muffins.

 These delicious moist muffins will always be there for us. That's the good thing about recipes like this. They never disappear or go away so long as you curate them and keep them in a safe place.

And that's what I am doing today.  Sticking the recipe here online for everyone to enjoy! Tina and Tony were here earlier and they said they were excellent!

Tangy from the orange, which also adds to the moistness.  Studded with sticky toffee dates, and willed with wholesome oats.

I cannot think of a way in which these could ever be improved!  I really can't.  Unless you also wanted to add some toasted chopped nuts.

 

I usually bake something like a muffin at the weekend. You never know when people are going to stop by so its nice to have something in the cake tin. They are also an extra special nice treat to enjoy with a hot cuppa in the middle of the afternoon or the evening when you're watching the telly. 

 One of the recipes in the recipe cards was for these Cinnamon Doughnut Puffs.  Delicious buttery muffins, rolled in melted butter and cinnamon sugar after baking. 

The flavour of them is very similar to the favour of a cake doughnut. Cake Doughnuts are my favourite kind of doughnuts!

 She was making doughnuts right up into her old age. Mom said however that she would always burn her fingertips in the fat because she had lost the feeling in them by that time.  

The last time we saw her she was suffering from Dementia.  By that stage she was seeing things that were not there and did not know who most people were.  My sister and I spent most of that visit in the field by the house feeding the old white horse that was kept there carrots and apples.

 My sister was horse crazy. She used to say she was going to marry one when she grew up.  She came close. Her first husband was a jack you know what, LOL  Sorry, I could not resist and truth be told she would agree with me! 

Anyways, Doughnut Muffins.  I adore Doughnut Muffins.  You get all of the wonderful flavour of a cake doughnut without any of the faff of frying! 

My mother used to buy a bag of them every now and then for us as a real treat. She would warm them up in the oven in a paper bag. Nothing on earth tasted better than those doughnuts.  She would give them to us as a dessert with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side. Heaven.

 These have a beautiful texture.  I love the flavour of the nutmeg in them. I suppose that is also what I love about cake doughnuts!  I adore nutmeg!

I have also added some vanilla.  Mostly because I am trying to use it up before I move, but also because I like vanilla and it goes really well with nutmeg.

If I had to choose between a cake doughnut and a yeast doughnut, I will choose a cake doughnut every time. There is something about their texture that I love more than anything in the world. 

When you are making these, do not overmix the batter.  Its okay to have a lumpy batter when it comes to muffins. In fact it is most desirable. Overmixing will result in a tough muffin and they won't raise as high!

I think of all the cake type doughnuts, sour cream are my favourite kind, followed closely by sour cream chocolate (doughnuts!). I can't wait to go to Tim Hortons and enjoy a couple of Tim Bits!

That's what they call the doughnut holes back home. Tim Bits. Nothing of the dougnut is wasted and you can buy the Tim Bits by the box, small, medium and large.  And, if you take your kids there after socker practice, they will give them a free Tim Bit, which to a child is a very big deal!

 

There are a great many versions of this delicious muffin out there. This one is excellent and makes for the perfect weekend breakfast with your morning cuppa! 

 

Usually at the weekend I like to bake us something that we can enjoy for breakfast or with a hot drink.  I do bake sweet things too.

I am not sure why I always bake at the weekend. I suppose it is a habit that started when I was working full time. I did not really have much time during the week to bake us anything special. We were lucky I managed to get dinner done!


The recipe I am sharing with you today for Sugar-Free Banana Nut Muffins has been adapted  from a cookbook of mine entitled Bread for Breakfast by Beth Hensperger.

It is filled with lots of baked Breakfast options, including muffins, loaves (both sweet and savoury, quick and yeasted), Scones, Biscuits, cornbreads, etc.

There are also a sections on coffee cakes and holiday bakes, pancakes and waffles, as well as butters, jams and fruit and cheese spreads.





Bananas are quite  sweet fruit and the longer you allow them to ripen the sweeter they get. The best bananas for baking are ones which are heavily speckled with brown, maybe even to the point where you think they are past it.

But they are not past it.  They are perfect and sweet and ready to be baked into muffins and loaves, cookies, cakes, etc.


These are lovely and moist.  There is buttermilk in the batter.  I love bakes with buttermilk. Buttermilk adds a special lightness and tenderness to bakes such as this.

It is an acid as well, so it helps to create a nice lift.  You always need to add bicarbonate of soda to a bake using something acidic like buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream, etc.


When baking soda is combined with the lactic acids of buttermilk, the acid neutralizes the metallic taste of sodium carbonate, and the batter will bubble and expand.


This is why when you are baking something with buttermilk and soda in it you need to get your bake into the oven as quickly as possible. This is to help take advantage of that chemical reaction. 

The heat of the oven will immediately increase the effects of that action giving you a nice tall and light bake. If you wait too long to put your bakes into the oven you will risk losing that effect, and in fact you will decrease the action of the buttermilk and the soda as well.


So speed is the key factor here.  Make sure you have your pan greased and everything ready to go as soon as you mix the wet and dry ingredients together!

So, no sugar.  These muffins have no sugar whatsoever.  I didn't mind.  The end result was not sweet at all actually. It was just right.  Just what I would expect a true muffin to taste like.

If you want sweet, you will have to add a bit of sugar into the mix.  I wouldn't think you would need a lot actually, maybe only 1 or 2 TBS of either caster sugar or soft light brown sugar.



We enjoyed them just as they were, served warm with some butter for spreading on top.  Look at the texture of these beauties.  I call that perfection.

The recipe only makes 9 muffins. That's another thing I liked about the recipe.  Nine muffins is a perfectly reasonable amount.  They also freeze really well according to the recipe.  Up to three months in an airtight container.



Baking things like this at the weekend means I also get to use my roll cover. My good friend Monique sent this sweet embroidered roll cover to me last year, or possibly even the year before, for my Birthday.

Every time I use it I cannot help but think of her, and her many kindnesses to me through the years.  Meeting good and kind people is one of the blessings you gain from being a member of the blogging community. 

Like is attracted to like. These sweet friendships are one of the things I love most about blogging. That sense of community. Oh sure there is the odd nasty person, or troll as they are called, but the good ones far outweigh them.



There are some pecans in these muffins.  Chopped pecans. I always like to toast my nuts before baking with them.  It doesn't take much of an effort.  It only takes a few minutes on a dry baking sheet in a hot oven.

They are done when they start to smell all nice and nutty. Do watch them however, as they can go from toasty to burnt in milliseconds.  Five to eight minutes at 200*C/400*F will do the trick.


You could also use walnuts if you prefer, or even leave the nuts out all together if you cannot abide nuts or are allergic.

You could add chocolate chips. Just saying.  I like semi-sweet chocolate chips or milk chocolate chips.  Both are quite nice in banana muffins. You could even add some berries.  Blueberries would be nice.





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