What is perfection? Well I'm not really sure, but in this muffin story it means fluffy, fabulous tasting muffins to take with you for snacks or to gobble one up in the morning on your way out the door. They even freeze well! Of course any story of perfection comes with lessons that were learned along the way. Trials, tribulations, pangs of angst. Of course, I've also found a lazy way to make them, because it's me here. So you can pick your method to mmmmmmmmmmmm......
Lessons:
1) Nuts are hard to digest in general. The traditional method of preparing nuts is to soak them in water and salt for a period of hours (depending on the type of nut). Then if one is fortunate to have a dehydrator then you dehydrate your soaked nuts for about 24 hours on a low setting. (or in the oven as low as it will go). I have been drawn to the cashew nut ever since I started the GAPS diet. My body just likes this nut. Well in other versions of this recipe I would try to use almonds, walnuts, pecans. On the pecanbread site for Specific Carbohydrate Diet, they say that pecans and almonds are the easiest to digest. Well I found it rather odd, that any nut with the exception of the cashew nut just gave my stomach hell. Lucky for me I looked up the cashew to see why this might be. Why, you ask? Why it's not a nut at all, it's a seed. Check out all about cashews here on WIKIPEDIA. So for those of you that can't do nuts yet, try the fabulous world of seeds: pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and cashews!
2) Eating a lot of nuts or in this case seeds can be quite constipating. So in working with these muffins, I tried to reduce the amount of cashew butter I used to include a veggie, I came up with butternut squash. Also, sometimes I'm over the whole plain cashew butter muffin. So what do I do? I peel and sautee granny smith apples with butter and cinnamon and pop those into my ready to go batter and voila!
3) Butter and baking soda. The timing of your ingredients is super important in baking. I was late for something (generally everything) and I asked my husband if he could pour the batter into the cups and bake them for me. Well when I returned from said function, he hadn't gotten to that yet. So the batter/butter had hardened up and when I baked them they turned out as unappreciative, dense muffins that were full of psychological bitterness for being abandoned mid-creation.
Baking soda will make or break your muffins. Forget this important ingredient and you can just forget about the fluff.
Okay now onto that recipe of mmmmmmm....
CASHEW (Seed) BUTTER MUFFINS:
Ingredients:
2 Cups of Cashew Butter (you can get the cashew and soak/dehydrate/grind with olive oil or you can purchase from this company: Artisana)
1 Cup of mashed butternut squash (you can buy, cook, and mash or you can purchase from this company: Farmer's Market ) (some of their products have sugar, so still read that label)
3 Eggs
1/2 cup of honey
1/2 stick of melted butter
1 teaspoon of baking soda
(any additional nut, fruit, vegetable you want to chuck in there)
Directions:
I use a food processor, but use what you can:
1) Start that butter melting (no microwaves!!)
2) Mix eggs, cashew butter, honey, and butternut squash
3) Pour in the melted butter and blend again
4) Put in the baking soda and blend again
5) Optional, add something you want in your muffins!
6) Pour in muffin cups (I use the ones from whole foods that are recycled)
7) Put in oven which should be heated a little below 350 (for my oven)
8) take anywhere from between 15-20 minutes.
VOILA, HAPPINESS!
This recipe is based off the general bread recipe given in "Breaking the Vicious Cycle"
