We have reached peak porridge consumption.
If what you need in your life is a breezy, wheat free portable breakfast or mid morning snack that’s busy with fruit and plumped with ground flax and oats, skip straight to the bottom. If you have a few minutes for context, scroll forth.
Making porridge to share with a toddler is a soothingly simple ritual.
Unlike other attempts at combined cooking, porridge is relatively indestructible. Last night an effort to indulge in the tactile delights of rolling chickpea flour pasta together resulted in five enthusiastic yells of ‘ROLL ROLL ROLL!’ (he has determined it must be said in triplicate, it appears), two pleasant minutes of folding dough between dimpled palms, then four frustrated hurlings of the pasta crank across the kitchen floor (by him, not me).
Life doesn’t always come with an instagram filter.
But oats are easy. Most mornings I boost ours with ground flax and fold through chia seeds at the end (beyond the good omegas they contain, they also help the porridge to solder to a small person’s spoon).
We pick and mix our flavourings and stand up by the stove and take turns stirring.
Some days our flavourings are strawberries, rosewater and almonds.
Others include pieces of peeled apple folded into the oats while they cook, allowing them to slacken in the minutes that follow. Add a few craisins for sweet pop and some cinnamon for warmth and it’s as comforting as a 3 pm bath on a rainy day.
And sometimes there are blackberries, apples and hazelnuts.
Yet, sometimes there isn’t time for porridge. Perhaps you’re dashing out the door. There are seagulls to harass at the beach and tiny ponies at your grandmother’s house to pet. Perhaps someone has decided they’ve had enough of soothing slurries in Ikea bowls. (That might be you. There is a solid truth in the idea that Golidlocks found Daddy Bear’s porridge piping hot, Baby Bear’s just right and Mummy Bear’s stone cold by the time she got the chance to sit down and eat it).
Or perhaps, you’re staring down the prospect that very soon, you’re not going to have a stove.
We are a few weeks off commencing Project Dream Kitchen. I have lost more hours than I thought possible weighing up the merits of kitchen island surfaces and creating ideabooks on ‘Houzz’. I have sunk into deep google-holes entertaining the prospect of refurbishing vintage butcher’s blocks. I stumbled into a ebay abyss of sink choices (one single wide sink big enough for roasting trays is my final choice- I think).
I am bamboozled and excited in equal measure. Yet there will be a hunger gap. A period of multiple weeks (months?) when the stove goes into storage and we will be glamping upstairs, with a fridge/freezer, a toaster and a microwave as our main kitchen tools.
And so I’m bulk making these muffins.
They are essentially a fist sized portion of blackberry apple porridge. They are sweetened with banana and a touch of honey. They are softened with yoghurt and soldered together with eggs and butter- though if you needed a dairy free alternative then coconut yoghurt and coconut oil would also work just as well.
Oatflour is often available in supermarkets as ‘oatbran’, but it’s very simply made by blitzing oats in the blender or food processor. It provides an excellent wheat-free alternative to plain flour in bakes and has a lovely natural sweetness. It is also an excellent addition in a tablespoon or so to a warm bath if you want to smooth your (or your offspring’s) skin.
These muffins can be happily stored in the freezer and revived in a microwave, or defrosted in a lunchbox.
There are a couple of tips and tricks in their construction. I find tossing the fruit in the dry ingredients before mixing in the wet helps prevent all of the fruit from sinking straight to the bottom. I rely on my ice cream scoop to easily portion the batter into muffin collars.
They are toddler approved, get the nursing mother tick of approval from some in our circle (oats being an excellent lactogen) and are simple enough to bake with children without having multiple kitchen tools hurled across the floor.
So what are you waiting for?
Blackberry Apple Oat flour Muffins
Makes 12 muffins
Nb, you could easily swap out the blackberries for other berries and
Shopping/foraging
75 g butter, melted, or coconut oil
2 eggs
1 ripe banana
115 g/ 1/3 cup honey
175 g/2/3 cup Greek Yoghurt
2 tbsp ground flax
1 tsp baking powder
125 g /1 1/4 cups oat flour
175 g/1 1/4 cups blackberries
1 apple, peeled and cut into small dice
Method
1) Preheat the oven to 180C/350 F and line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake liners, or grease well.
2) Whisk together the melted butter, ripe banana and honey.
3) Add the eggs and Greek yoghurt and beat to combine.
4) Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl and toss the berries and apple in the dry ingredients to coat (this prevents them from sinking to the bottom of the muffin).
5) Fold the wet ingredients into the dry.
6) Portion into the muffin tin, about 3/4 of the way full.
8) Bake for 25-28 minutes, until the tops are brown and a skewer inserted comes out clean.
