Peanut-Mesquite Muffins

Now that summer has given way to leaf-strewn fall, the idea of going outside to grill something for dinner has gotten a lot less appealing. So much for mesquite-laced, smoky veggies and meats. (And fruits, too. Ever tried grilled pineapple? Sublime!) Seems like that signature mesquite flavor is only available during the summer months.

…Or maybe it isn’t. It turns out that the same tree that yields mesquite wood for the grill also bears a fruit that can be dried out and ground into flour. Like the smoke given off by the burning mesquite wood, mesquite flour carries a hint of caramel smokiness. It hangs somewhere between sweet and earthy and will probably make you think of campfires. The assertive flavor of mesquite fits best with other assertive flavors: chocolate, peanut, coffee. It’s also one of North America’s indigenous edibles — long before European settlers arrived, Native American tribes were enjoying both the culinary and utilitarian aspects of mesquite trees.

The only downside about mesquite flour is that it’s tricky to find unless you live in Arizona or New Mexico. You can order it online, though, from places like http://www.nutsonline.com/ and http://www.mesquiteflour.com/. And if worst comes to worst and you simply don’t have any way to get your hands on mesquite but still want to make these Peanut Muffins, you can use teff or buckwheat flour instead — those are also nutty, dark, rich flours and pair well with peanut. That plus a little maple syrup drizzled onto the muffins before serving would mimic a little bit of mesquite’s caramel-esque tinge.

Peanut-Mesquite Muffins
Makes 12 muffins.

1 cup peanut flour OR 1 cup sorghum flour*
1/2 cup brown rice flour*
1/2 cup mesquite flour OR 1/2 cup buckwheat flour OR 1/2 cup teff flour*
1/2 cup rolled oats (be sure to get gluten-free oats if you’re baking gluten-free muffins)
1 T. baking powder
Dash of sea salt
1/2 cup date sugar
1/2 cup palm sugar OR sucanat
1 1/4 cups whole milk, preferably from grass-fed cows (if you live in Metro Detroit, you’re lucky — we have Calder’s)
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 tsp. vanilla
1/3 cup unrefined peanut oil OR extra-virgin olive oil

Two notes before we begin:

- If you don’t have date sugar and/or you want your muffins to be sweeter, use 1 cup sucanat instead of splitting it with date sugar. (Date sugar is less sweet than sucanat; both are granulated, not liquid.) -

- If you don’t have peanut flour, use the sorghum flour instead, and substitute 1/4 cup peanut butter for one of the eggs. Having 1 egg + 1/4 cup peanut butter will give you plenty of peanut flavor in addition to helping the muffins stick together. -

Preheat oven to 375F and line a muffin tin with paper cups.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, oats, baking powder, and salt. In another large bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Stir the liquid portion into the flour mixture until well-blended. (I like to use a whisk, although this technique is much more effective for gluten-free batters than wheat-based ones — the wheat is more difficult to stir because of its gluten-thickened texture.)

Quickly spoon the batter into the waiting cups and bake for 22 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy!

* These are gluten-free flours. If you wish to make wheat-based muffins, substitute spelt, kamut, or whole-wheat flour for the peanut/sorghum and brown rice flours.

Pumpkin Coffeecake

Even though The Great Pumpkin Day has come and gone, pumpkins are still everywhere we look, and they’ll still be seasonally “in” when winter has us in an icy grip.  (Not looking forward to the slick streets, but I am looking forward to soft white carpets of snow making the neighborhood look like it’s been transported to an alien planet.  Every winter, I wonder if the Hoth scenes from Empire Strikes Back were shot in Michigan…)

In the spirit of continuing great pumpkin traditions, I’ve come up with a moist pumpkin coffeecake that can be served as dessert, as breakfast, with tea…or with coffee, of course.  The yogurt and pumpkin in the batter contribute to its velvety richness, and the date sugar and sucanat lend the cake a sweetness that’s flavorful instead of being just sheerly sugary.  You could even make an autumn parfait by layering small pieces of the cake with dried cranberries and Greek yogurt (or ice cream).  One of the versions of a classic trifle, in fact, is really a gigantic parfait, typically layered with whipped cream rather than ice cream and served in a large, clear bowl with straight sides.  Talk about a tasty fall party dessert!

Pumpkin Coffeecake

This cake is gluten-free, but if you’d prefer to use wheat flour, use 1 3/4 cups whole-wheat flour instead of the blend of gluten-free flours.

For the topping:

3/4 cup old-fashioned oats (be sure to get gluten-free oats if you’re making a gluten-free cake!)
1/3 cup sucanat
1 tsp. cinnamon
Pinch of sea salt
1/4 cup slivered or sliced almonds
2 T. melted butter, preferably from pastured cows (see note below)

Mix topping ingredients together in a medium bowl and set aside.

For the cake:

1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/4 cup amaranth flour
1 cup sorghum flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. cardamom OR ground cloves
1 stick butter, preferably from pastured cows (Organic Valley and Kerrygold are good choices)
1/3 cup sucanat
1/3 cup date sugar (which is simply dried dates that have been ground up; you can find date sugar at any whole-foods-oriented grocery store, including health-food stores)
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
1 cup puréed pumpkin (organic really honestly does taste a LOT better and is well worth seeking out)
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Grease an 8×8 glass pan and set aside.

Whisk together flours, baking soda, salt, and spices in a medium bowl. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter for at least 1 minute — the more you aerate the butter, the loftier and more tender your cake will be — and then blend in sucanat and date sugar, beating the mixture for another minute. Beat in eggs one at a time.

Beat in half of the flour mixture, then beat in the pumpkin, yogurt, and vanilla. Beat in the rest of the flour mixture. NOTE: if you are using gluten-free flours, you can work with the batter for as long as you like without making it tough. If you are working with whole-wheat flour, only beat the batter long enough to just blend the ingredients — when you overmix a wheat-based batter/dough, you can overdevelop the gluten and run the risk of having a chewy cake. Either way, though, be sure not to poke along when you’re blending the batter, because baking soda begins to react and poof the moment it comes into contact with an acidic liquid (in this case, the yogurt). The sooner you get that batter into the oven, the better the baking soda will be able to do its job.

Pour the batter into the glass pan, then spoon on the topping. Bake cake for 40 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy!

Apricot, Date & Coconut Smoothie

Dates are fabulously useful!  Just don’t confuse them with figs, which are also lovely but which don’t have the staying power or sweetness of dates.  (And don’t confuse fresh figs with the gritty stuff inside Fig Newtons — an actual fig tastes much lighter and fruitier, plus it beautifully shades from pink to cream to tan and back again.)  Dates are a hardy lot, prized throughout the world for their lush sticky sweetness and their ability to hold things together.  Lärabars, for example, are bar-shaped thanks to mashed dried dates.  Many cakes and breads of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern origin are both shaped and sweetened by dates.

Because dates contain such a high percentage of natural sugar, dried dates preserve themselves quite nicely.  (Sugar is a preservative.)  In fact, once they’ve lost enough moisture, dried dates can be ground into date “sugar.”  It doesn’t dissolve as readily as cane sugar does, but date sugar is pleasantly sweet and retains a mild, mellow date flavor that pairs perfectly with less-sweet fruits like apricots and strawberries.

One of my favorite ways to use date sugar is in smoothies.  I came up with this smoothie because my apricots were a bit on the tart side — adding date sugar was the perfect solution.  You can find date sugar nestled alongside the other natural sugars in health-food/whole-food stores.  (If you spot a bag of sucanat, pick that up, too!)

Apricot, Date & Coconut Smoothie

To make a single-serving smoothie, blend together 1 apricot (pit removed, but skin left on), 1/2 cup whole coconut milk, 1/4 cup cold water, and 1 T. date sugar.  If you’d like your smoothie to be extra-thick, use less water and more milk; if you’d like it to be thinner, reverse the equation.  You could also use dairy milk, but I think the tropical palm + palm combination (i.e., coconut + date) is a tasty one.  If you’d like your smoothie to be sweeter, simply add more date sugar.

Enjoy!