Madame Moose and Some Magic Mango Muffins

These delightful mango muffins bring a taste of the tropics to your table. Loaded with banana, coconut, dates, and chunks of juicy mango, they are lightly sweet and made more nutritious with the fiber from oats and flax seeds. A quick and easy one-bowl bake. (Skip to recipe.)

As we head further into cocooning ourselves at home, it becomes more important to do little things to bring pleasure. A warm muffin with a cup of tea certainly does that for me. What about you?

These muffins celebrate a taste of the tropics, letting me armchair-travel to some wonderful palm treed island in beautiful blue waters. I can close my eyes and I am there, hearing the swish of the waves against the rocky shore.

When I open my eyes again, I see the snow piled high outside the windows. Looking around me indoors, I glimpse some of the projects I’ve been working on during this self-isolation period.

I’m glad I whipped up a batch of mango muffins to help transport me to a happy place while I eat one warm and fresh from the oven.

What Have You Been Doing to Keep Busy?

We’ve been trying to keep moving by doing exercises (I’m focusing on sit-ups, leg-lifts, and push-ups; starting at 0 and increasing by 5 every day, and hey, that’s better than what I was doing before!), snowshoeing, reading, cooking, Netflix binge-watching, and organizing dusty old piles of accumulated crap.

I’ve also been growing microgreens in my kitchen window to give us a touch of bright green to top sandwiches and salads and to garnish healthy homemade dishes.

I’ve finally started my own gluten free sourdough starter. This one’s made with sorghum flour and is coming along nicely. It’ll take eight days of feeding it twice daily, and then it should be done so I can start playing around with making homemade gluten free sourdough breads.

I’ve been transplanting some of my houseplants. The poor babies were so rootbound they were crying out for new pots to live in.

I’ve started tackling the unholy mess that is my studio and craft room where I do all my German School planning and painting projects. How in the world did it get this bad?

And in Other Breaking News: Madame Moose Paid us a Visit

A few days ago we woke up to Pippa barking at about 5:30 in the morning. It went on sporadically for almost an hour and we were too lazy to get up and look, thinking it was just deer in the yard, as we often get. Well . . . we woke up to this:

Madame Moose sitting as brazen as you please in the snow just 20 feet from Pippa’s kennel. She had just plunked herself in the snow and was calmly chewing her cud. When I opened the deck door and shouted at her, she just turned her head toward me and gave me a baleful stare.

She eventually heaved herself up, and watched me curiously for a while.

Then she hung around for another hour or so, kindly pruning our trees for us as she munched her breakfast.

I debated giving her one of my nice warm muffins (you know – ‘If you Give a Moose a Muffin’), but decided to keep them all for ourselves instead.

Because these mango muffins are too delicious to share with any moose!

They’re tender and moist, with a beautiful crumb. The subtle banana flavour is perked up with juicy bits of bright mango, nutty coconut, and sweet pops of diced dates. These have been declared ‘the best muffins ever’ in our house, but I’ll let you be your own judge.

The most wonderful aroma as they are baking makes you feel all cozy inside, no matter what may be going on in the world outside.

So even if you’ve got no moose hounding you for fresh muffins, you can share these with any resident two-legged ‘critters’ you’re feeding in your home.

Just for Fun

Other moose and wild critter visits:

• Lentil Fries and the Prince George Moose
• Porcupine Meatballs and the Porcupine Visit
• Tuna Cannellini Bean Salad and the Porcupine Damage
• Golden Lentil Soup and the Deer Come Calling
• Sweet ‘n Spicy Moose Wings (Delicious Chicken Wings recipe and a moose visit)

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Baking is two-fold therapy: calming and grounding as you are puttering in the kitchen, then soothing the soul and bringing joy as you taste and share the fruits of your labours.

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Kitchen Frau Notes: Use your favourite gluten free flour blend to make these mango muffins gluten free. I use this one. (Or use regular all purpose wheat flour if you don’t need to be gluten free.)

If you don’t have fresh mango, frozen works fine. Just partially thaw and chop it into smallish chunks. Or use fresh or frozen pineapple or peaches, or even chunks of apple, instead. If you don’t have coconut, substitute it with other chopped nuts of your choice.

You can buy ground flax seeds, but it’s quick to grind whole flax seeds with a blender or coffee grinder. Store extra ground flax seeds in the freezer as they contain high amounts of omega-3 fatty acids. These are extremely health-promoting, but can go rancid quickly at room temperature. Flax seeds need to be ground to get the health benefits as our bodies can’t break down the tough outer shell of the seeds.

Magic Mango Muffins

• 2 medium-sized ripe bananas – about 1 cup (225gms) mashed
• 2 large eggs
• ½ cup (80gms) coconut sugar (or substitute brown sugar, loosely measured)
• ½ cup (120ml) oil (I like avocado oil)
• 2 tablespoons (30ml) water
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup (125gms) gluten free flour blend (or all-purpose flour for non g.f.)
• 1 cup (85gms) quick oats (small flaked, but not instant oats, g.f. if necessary)
• 1/3 cup (40gms) ground flax seeds
• 1¼ teaspoons baking soda
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 cup (175gms) roughly chopped (pea-sized) fresh or frozen mango (or substitute fresh or frozen chopped pineapple, peaches, or apples)
• ½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut, plus a bit more for the tops
• ½ cup diced dates (or substitute raisins)

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Grease a 12-serving muffin tin well with butter or oil.

Mash bananas in a medium-sized mixing bowl with a fork or potato masher. Add in the eggs, coconut sugar, oil, water, and vanilla. Whisk well to combine.

Add the gluten free flour, oats, flax, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg. Stir with a spoon until just combined. Fold in the chopped mango, coconut, and dates.

Divide the batter among the 12 wells of the greased muffin tin (a spring-loaded ice cream scoop works well). Sprinkle the tops of each muffin with a bit of the coconut, if desired.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tops of the muffins spring back when touched.

Cool 5 minutes in the pan, then remove to a cooling rack to finish cooling.

Makes 12 muffins.

Guten Appetit!

 

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