Buckwheat Walnut and Currant Muffins

Happy Valentine's Day! Since it falls on a Sunday morning, what better way to show your love food-wise than bringing breakfast in bed to your better half.

These amazing muffins are the perfect blend of savory, sweet, and healthy but not too heavy and are great with butter or fruit preserves. I found the recipe here and substituted bread flour for the rice flour and added some cardamom, my favorite spice for baking. They were quick for a baking item and I plan to try a variety of other additions like crystalized ginger and walnuts or dried cranberries and pecans. Wednesday's Bitten blog also featured a healthy muffin that suggested using cooked winter squash (butternut, pumpkin) or sweet potato, all of which I have used in the past and work well (substitute the cooked squash for the applesauce.) In this instance I didn't have any applesauce on hand. So following my lazy/DIY impulse, I simply peeled two small apples, diced them and boiled them with just enough water to cover them until I could mash them. Perfect!

Buckwheat Walnut and Currant Muffins

3/4 cup bread flour
3/4 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup ground flaxseed
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup currants
2 eggs
1/4 cup sunflower or safflower oil
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (or 1 cup peeled, diced apples boiled in water to cover and mashed)
1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners and set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together bread flour, buckwheat flour, flaxseed, brown sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, salt and currants. In a second large bowl, whisk together eggs, oil, applesauce and buttermilk. Add flour mixture to buttermilk mixture and stir until just combined. Spoon batter into prepared muffin tins and bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean, about 24 minutes. Cool muffins in pan for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Hugs!