8 grain banana blueberry muffins

It seems like all I do is post recipes that are adaptations of other recipes - and the truth is - I do!!  I love getting inspiration from interesting sounding recipes. I don't know if you are like me - but I love to experiment in the kitchen! I have my own tastes and ideas about what goes well together and basically I HATE having to measure everything so precisely!  Cooking should be fun and an expression of who you are!

That said, baking is one of those areas where you have to at least understand the properties of what goes into a muffin - what goes into a cake - what goes into a cookie before you start messing around with things.  A poorly executed cake can quickly turn into a sweet lump of goo- or a nice smelling brick :)

So when I fool around with baking recipes I am cautiously optimistic as I put things into the oven.  This morning I played around (a bit) with a recipe on the back of my Bob's Red Mill 8 Grain Hot Cereal package.  And it was a hit!

Here is the original recipe for Ruthie's 8 Grain Muffins:
http://www.bobsredmill.com/recipes.php?recipe=913

And here is my Adaptation:

1 1/4 cup light vanilla soy milk
1 cup Bob's Red Mill 8 Grain Cereal

1 egg
1/4 cup olive oil (could use butter but I didn't have any)
1 med banana
1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp salt
2 teas baking powder (1 teas baking soda would also work but I was all out)
1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup blueberries (I used frozen)
2 Tbs flour (I used whole wheat) to coat the berries

In a bowl combine milk and cereal - let sit on counter at least 10 mins (to soften the grains).  Preheat oven to 400.   Toss berries in flour in a small bowl to coat. Cream together egg, oil, banana and sugar on med.    Add salt, powder, flour and milk and cereal mix stir until just combined.  Gently fold in berries.  Cook in well-sprayed muffin tin - about 15mins.  Makes 12 good sized muffins.