Going Bananas and Nuts

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I promised myself I wouldn’t do this. I know it makes me crazy. Okay, okay, I know, I’m already crazy, so this just makes me crazier. Something about food lately got me in the mood to break my rule. As I am reminded often by a friend, there are always exceptions to rules. I’m making an exception here because I promised myself I’d never do food posts.
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Why no food posts you wonder?

No. 1

I absolutely loathe photographing food; even one food shot is too much. The only thing worse is photographing me.

No. 2

When I cook or bake, I go into this altered state where I’m in the flow of what I’m doing and very present in moving with that. Call it a kind of meditation, if you will. Having to interrupt that process to document it in any way disturbs that flow, removing the pleasure of my “in the moment experience of creating”.

No. 3

There’s so many excellent food posts on Hive. I really don’t know what I have to add in this regard.
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I’m breaking my hard fast rule though. I was inspired, yet again, by another person on Hive that I met a while back. This is one of the aspects I really appreciate about this community, lots of creative fodder comes from meeting and engaging with others here. As a result, I end up choosing to do things I wouldn’t typically do.

On to the banana nuttiness of it all. Following is a gluten free recipe I created. The creation of which, was inspired by discussion of gluten free flour blends with Dudek, after he linked me to his post for the egg-egg-egg waltz because I’d never come up with a satisfying gluten free carrot cake recipe.

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Banana Walnut Muffins

Ingredients:

¾ cup rice flour
¾ cup buckwheat flour
1 teas baking powder
1 teas baking soda
1 teas ground cinnamon
½ teas ground nutmeg
3 overripe bananas
½ teas sea salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons rum
¼ cup buttermilk
½ cup coconut sugar
1 teas vanilla extract
½ cup walnut halves, crushed
3 eggs

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Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a muffin pan with jumbo sized paper baking cups. This recipe makes twelve muffins.

Thoroughly mix rice flour, buckwheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a bowl and set aside.

Mash the crap out of the bananas in another bowl. Add the sea salt, olive oil, coconut sugar, vanilla, and rum. Mix well. Add the buttermilk and mix again. Add the walnuts and mix a third time.

Beat the eggs until they cry for mercy in a separate bowl, then combine with the banana mixture.

Lastly, gently fold the wet mixture into the dry mixture. No beating the crap out of it at this point unless you want muffins tough enough to punch you in the teeth.

Fill each baking cup with equal portions of the muffin batter. For extra fun, decorate each with a piece of walnut on top.

Bake for 20 minutes, depending on your oven, it could be a little less than 20 minutes. You know your oven best.

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Clawed and bitten three times taste testing...yumminess Page break.png

Notes:

If buckwheat flour is unavailable, buckwheat groats can be purchased and ground into a flour using a coffee grinder, such as I’ve done for this recipe.

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The flours I used can be switched out with any gluten free flour mix that does not already contain baking powder and baking soda. Going for the gluten? Switch out the flours here for regular flour. Page break.png

Oh sooo YUM Jamaican Rum Page break.png

Rum is optional, as are nuts, depending on dietary needs and preferences.

Olive oil can be switched out for another fat of preference.

Coconut sugar can be switched out for any sugar of preference, although best to stick with a non-liquid sugar to keep the other ingredients in balance.

Okay, so I didn’t go completely bananas taking the photos for this post. I found a secret weapon that made it all possible. If I tell you what that is though, you’re going to think I’m nuts for sure. It’s my cell phone. Shhhhhhhhh………don’t tell anyone I’m shooting photos with a cell phone or I’ll get shot. Page break.png

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_{All photos taken by Nine with an ancient android cell phone camera. Nine’s Pentax digital camera breathed massive sighs of relief at zero contact with food photofests.} Page break.png