Yummy Muffins

Here's a tasty muffin recipe I came up with yesterday. It's a new twist on an old favorite... for years, I've regularly made a recipe for banana chocolate chip muffins that I received at a cooking demonstration by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau a long time ago, which was her own spin on a banana cake recipe in my friend Jennifer Raymond's cookbook, The Peaceful Palate. My family has always enjoyed them, but they are a bit overly sweet, so I decided to health them up a bit, without losing the yummy chocolate goodness of course. I didn't bother to photograph them; they don't look like anything too exciting, but they taste great, I promise!

Cranana Chocolate Chip Muffins

1¾ cups flour (I used white whole wheat)
¼ cup ground flaxseeds
1½ teaspoons baking soda
½ teaspoon sea salt
¾ cups unrefined sugar
3 tablespoons canola oil
3 tablespoons applesauce
3 medium-sized ripe bananas
¼ cup non-dairy milk (I used hemp milk)
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ cup chocolate chips
½ cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a muffin tin with cooking spray.

In a mixing bowl, combine flour, flaxseeds, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, cream the sugar, oil, and applesauce. Mash the bananas and add them to the sugar mixture; mix, then add non-dairy milk and vanilla. Mix again, then combine wet and dry ingredients and incorporate the chocolate chips and dried cranberries.

Spoon batter into muffin tins, filling 3/4 full. This should give you 12 muffins. I can't remember for sure how long I baked these, but I think it was 25 minutes. Just keep an eye on them and take them out when the tops are lightly browned and they pass the toothpick test.