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I made made some nice, sugary strawberry cupcakes for a birthday party this week, and it made me want to try out a sugar-free version. After some serious pondering about the difference between a cupcake and a muffin…is it the time of day you eat it? Is a cupcake sweeter? Does it really come down to frosting?…I decided that it probably comes down to the presence or absence of frosting. Google disagrees. It says that a muffin is denser, which bodes well for this recipe since anything banana-sweetened is going to be a little denser than a version sweetened with sugar.

So here we are…a strawberry muffin! Throw some cream cheese frosting on there and it’s a BERRY delicious (albeit dense(ish)) cupcake. Or bake it in cake pans and make it a smash cake. Or griddle it and make pancakes.

I usually try my recipes out in pancake form first so I can adjust flavor and texture as needed without having to start all the way over. My daughter calls every baked good “pancake”, probably for this reason.

Back to the muffins. They are simple, moist, and tasty. Serve them plain or with a little cream cheese spread on them. The only note I have for this recipe is to make sure the strawberries are VERY DRY before adding them to the batter. Moisture is the enemy of baking, and strawberries hold a lot of moisture as is. ENJOY!

Ingredients

• 1 cup flour, whole wheat or white
• 2/3 cup almond flour (you can go with all regular flour if you prefer)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
• 1 ripe banana
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 full-fat plain greek yogurt (or full-fat sour cream)
• 1/4 cup + 1 Tablespoon milk
• 1 1/2 cup strawberries cut very small and VERY DRY

The Process

Preset oven to 350 degrees and line muffin tin with paper liners. I ended up with 18 muffins, so if you have 2 tins, go ahead and line 6 on the second tin. Otherwise, just work in batches.

In a large mixing bowl, melt butter and add banana. Mash with a fork until the banana is as smooth as possible. Add 2 eggs and whisk until well combined. Whisk in vanilla and yogurt/sour cream. Add almond flour (or 2/3 regular flour if opting out of almond flour), baking powder, and baking soda. whisk until just combined. Add milk and mix until almost incorporated. Add remaining 1 cup of flour and mix until just combined.

Using a rubber spatula (mine says “I like big mutts and I cannot lie,” in case anyone was wondering), fold in strawberries. Mix until evenly incorporated and transfer into muffin tins. You want to fill them about half-way.

Bake at 350 for 19 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool and enjoy! Once cool, store in air-tight container in the fridge.

This time of year, pumpkin is everywhere. Sure, it’s fun and it’s seasonal…but what about its orange tuber cousin (once removed) the sweet potato? It’s sweeter, easier to roast, and involves zero squishy seed slime removal. It tastes good with all the pumpkin spices, and it’s available year-round. Have I convinced you to switch to team sweet potato yet? Am I going to persuade you with a delicious, healthy breakfast staple? YES I YAM!

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup almond flour
• 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg (fresh grated if you have it)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup milk (any kind)
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 3/4 cup sweet potato
• 2 eggs
• 3 Tbsp butter, melted

The process

Wrap one small sweet potato in aluminum foil and bake at 375 degrees for an hour and a half, or until it is very soft. You can do this ahead of time, even the day before.

In a large mixing bowl, combine all dry ingredients with a whisk. In a separate bowl, combine 3/4 cup of the roasted sweet potato flesh with the wet ingredients (except the butter). Make sure this mixture is very smooth. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and whisk until just combined. Don’t overmix. Lumps are okay. Melt butter and whisk it in. Lumps are still okay. Overmixing makes for tough pancakes. We are shooting for fluffy here.

In a large skillet or griddle on medium heat, sprayed with cooking spray or coated with butter, scoop out batter into desired size of pancakes. I used a 1/4 measuring cup and filled it about half full. I found the batter worked better for smaller pancakes. Once bubbles start to form in the center of the batter, flip them over and cook them until golden brown.

(Un)Official pancake rules: The first pancake is always ugly and either burnt or raw…or somehow both burnt and raw. Just plan on giving this to the dog. Or to the garbage. Adjust the heat as needed and start on the second one, “the taster”. It must be enjoyed by the chef while standing over the stove. There are no rules starting with pancake number three, so have at it.

This recipe made about 20 small pancakes. I like to bag them in sets of two and freeze them. They toast up nicely directly from frozen in the toaster oven.

The family may prefer syrup, but my little one enjoyed them with cut up banana. I should really say that she enjoyed them AFTER the cut up banana.

Fall has arrived! Living in Savannah, that means I put on long sleeves and boots and just sweat my way through the heat, hoping the weather starts to cool down sometime before Christmas. That, and I start putting nutmeg in everything. So, I thought I would pass the fall flavors along to my daughter in a spiced apple cake. Plus, I had the idea that she would be helpful in cutting up the apples with her crinkle cutter while standing on her new toddler tower. Spoiler alert…she cut three apple slices, ate over half of the apple I was planning on using in the recipe, and then cried from boredom after two and a half minutes. Maybe that’s why you never see toddler sous chefs in restaurants. They really just aren’t that helpful.

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup oat flour (you can make your own by blitzing oats in the food processor until smooth-ish)
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ginger
• 1/4 tsp cloves
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup milk (I used oat milk)
• 1/2 stick of butter
• 1/2 Gala apple, cut into small cubes

The Process

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put the half stick of butter into a 5 inch cake pan and put in oven to melt while preheating (lazy baker tip). In a mixing bowl, combine flours, spices, baking powder, and baking soda. Whisk in vanilla extract, applesauce, egg, and milk until just combined. Remove cake pan from oven once butter is melted. Swirl the butter around edges of pan to grease it and pour butter out into cake mixture. Whisk until just combined. Pour half of the batter mixture into the cake pan. Sprinkle about half of cubed apple onto batter then add rest of batter mixture on top. Top batter with the remaining cubed apple. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Hattie is a banana junkie, so much so that we have to call it “something yellow” around her so that she doesn’t lose her mind in anticipation of the “nana”. She can eat a large banana in four bites. It’s a pretty amazing party trick/choking hazard. Needless to say, this banana-sweetened french toast was a huge hit.

The Prep

You will need:

• Half of a large, very ripe banana (or a whole small one)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup milk (any type–I used oatmilk)
• 4 slices of bread (I like Dave’s Killer Sprouted Grain)
• 1-2 Tbsp Butter

The easiest way to make this would be to put the banana, egg, cinnamon, milk, and vanilla in a food processor until smooth. But I hate cleaning the food processor, so I just mashed the banana to death with a fork and whisked in everything else.

The Process

Heat a non-stick skillet over medium heat and add a little butter. Toss a slice of bread into the egg/banana mixture and let sit for 5 seconds then flip and do the same on the other side. You want the liquid to soak through the bread. It’s okay if there are banana lumps.

Once the pan is hot, shake off excess liquid from the bread and cook it in your skillet until brown (3ish minutes) then flip! Cook on the low side of medium to prevent banana burning. You’ll know it’s ready when both sides are browned and the bread is no longer soggy. Repeat with the rest of the bread and enjoy with berries. Or just as is. Or syrup, if you’re into that kind of thing.