A friend gave us a muffin recipe that MessyMom adapted to our tastes a few years ago. I’m at the point where I’ll just throw stuff into these to try new flavors - applesauce, cinnamon, etc - and they are always good. If they come out too dry for any reason, just cut them in half and spread on some butter, peanut butter or honey. You can’t mess them up!

Ingredients

· 1¾ c flour (ours is whole wheat)
· 1/4 c toasted wheat germ (if desired, I usually don’t have this in the house)
· 1 tsp baking soda
· 1c mashed ripe banana (about 3 medium bananas)
· ½ c honey
· ½ c natural creamy peanut butter
· 2 eggs
· 1/3 cup vegetable/canola oil
· ¼ c brown sugar
· 2 tsp vanilla

Directions

Preheat oven to 400º.
1. Line/spray 12 regular size muffin cups or 6-8 jumbo muffin cups.
2. Stir first 4 ingredients in small bowl to blend.
3. Using a mixer, beat bananas, honey, peanut butter, eggs, oil, sugar and vanilla.
4. Gradually beat in flour mixture.
5. Pour into muffin cups, about ¾ full.
Bake until toothpick comes out clean, about 20 mins. Cool on rack.

Instead of packaged granola bars, we’ve been making these for lunchbox snacks.

Ingredients

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Melt butter in small pot over med-low heat on stove. When mostly melted, add honey, stir, turn off stove but leave pot on burner so honey warms up.

3. Combine oats, flour, peanuts, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and cocoa in large bowl. Mix well.

4. In a small bowl combine oil, egg, orange juice, water and vanilla. Stir in warm honey and butter.

5. Pour wet ingredients into large bowl with dry ingredients. Stir until all dry ingredients are mixed in and well coated. Add chocolate chips and dried fruit - or other desired mix-ins.

6. Using a rubber scraper, press mixture firmly onto a small cookie sheet lined with a Silpat liner or sprayed with cooking spray. Take your time to keep the batter flat and even. If you don’t have enough batter to fill the cookie sheet, use the rubber scraper to finish off the edge of the bars in a straight line.

7. Bake 14 mins, until light brown and firm.

8. Remove from oven and cool on baking rack. When cool, cut into 10-15 bars.

NOTE: We add the butter and chocolate chips to add calories on weeks when we work out a lot. If you prefer a lower calorie snack, you can eliminate the butter (and add the honey at room temp to step 4), and leave out the chocolate chips. If you don’t have a food chopper to grind up the peanuts, you can just add a handful of peanuts as a mix-in or leave them out for lower fat (but lower protein).

Also: these are soft, not crunchy.

Adapted from The Laptop Lunch’s Oatmeal Bars.

Alice the Messy Chef likes a breakfast that is easy to take on the go, so she decided to create her own, healthier toaster pasteries. Here’s what she came up with:

Ingredients

· 1¼ c flour (ours is a blend of 3 parts whole wheat to one part white)
· ¼ c sugar
· pinch of salt
· ¼ c butter softened
· 1/8 c vegetable/canola oil
· 1/8 c water
· 1 egg
· 1 1/2 tsp jelly - flavor of your choice
· 2/3 c blueberries

Directions

Preheat oven to 375º
1. Combine flour and sugar.
2. Cut in butter with a fork.
3. Add oil, water and egg. Stir until well mixed.
4. Press onto Silpat on a cookie sheet.5. Bake for 7 minutes.

While that’s baking…
5. Mix jelly and berries in food chopper/processor. Refrigerate.
6. Remove dough from oven. Leave oven on. Slice dough lengthwise into 2 parts, but leave it on the Silpat-topped cookie sheet.
7. Pour filling on ½ of the dough, avoiding the edges. Cover with the half of the dough.
8. Bake 2 more minutes.
9. Remove from oven (you can turn it off this time) and slide the Silpat onto a wire cooling rack.
10. Slice into pasteries and seal edges with a fork.

Makes 6 pasteries