Category Archives: Cooking

The rebranding of “white whole wheat flour”

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I recently started noticing “golden wheat flour” by King Arthur in the baking aisle at Whole Foods. I previously always bought the standard Whole Foods brand whole wheat flour for use in baking and making Kaia “healthy” treats, but this caught my eye. In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, Whole Foods always has sales in its baking aisle, so I stopped in earlier this week to restock on all-purpose and whole wheat flour. I decided to give the “golden wheat flour” a try.

I dug more into what “golden wheat flour” was, and I found out that about two years ago, King Arthur rebranded their “white whole wheat flour” to “golden wheat whole wheat flour.” It is 100 percent whole grain flour milled from hard white wheat, which gives it a lighter color and a milder flavor compared to traditional whole wheat flour made from red wheat (also from a branding standpoint, it’s very hard to wrap one’s head around “white whole wheat” because that sounds almost oxymoronic). This is definitely a welcome addition for those of us like me who are trying to incorporate more whole grains, less refined starches, and also want to increase fiber and nutritional profiles of what we are baking.

My first use of the golden wheat flour was in this week’s challah. I did 50 percent all purpose, 50 percent golden wheat. The color of the dough was definitely a bit lighter than when I used whole wheat as 50 percent. It is definitely on brand with the re-branding: the dough is very much “golden” in color! After shaping, proofing, shaping, and baking, the loaves came out in a beautiful brown golden color. And once I sliced into the loaves and had some, I knew golden wheat flour would be my go-to moving forward for whole grain flour. It has a slight nutty flavor, and it definitely is not as “heavy” or “hard” as traditional whole wheat. I could even see myself using this in cookies! I still want to use spelt flour, but I’ll likely use it in things like pancakes and quick breads as opposed to yeast breads like challah or brioche moving forward.

A day off with snow flurries, freezing temperatures, lots of cooking, and scooting

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Since I started at my current company, I’ve had Veteran’s day off the last six years. No other company I’ve ever worked at gave me Veteran’s Day off. I suppose it’s one way to be “inclusive,” but what that ultimately means is that other days off I would hope to get don’t happen, such as New Year’s Eve. That is not a federal holiday, but every company before this current one gave that day off. These days, I have to request that day off officially. Now that Kaia is in preschool, she also gets that day off, so she was at home with us today. She woke up in our bed after creeping over to us a few hours before wake-up time and got excited to see tiny snowflakes falling from the sky.

“What is that falling from the sky, Mama?” Kaia asked, pointing out the window.

“It’s snow, Pookie!” I exclaimed. “Tiny little snowflakes falling down!”

Today, I made a bunch of things to feed the family: browned butter buttermilk oatmeal pancakes using toasted and ground steel-cut oats, my remaining buttermilk, and a bit of browned butter for extra toastiness. Both Chris and Kaia enjoyed these pancakes; they are likely the tastiest (but alas, most laborious) oatmeal pancakes I’ve ever made. So these will definitely be on rotation. I am very much in the “clean out the pantry and fridge” mode right now, so that ticked off using up my remaining buttermilk and most of my small amount of remaining steel-cut oats. That was followed by Eleven Madison Park style granola (which Kaia diligently picked out all the dried sour cherries from her portion…), Thai green curry with chicken and tofu using homemade stock from the bone bag in my freezer, leftover cut-up firm tofu, and pre-frozen cubes of green curry that I doctored up; plus, Thai-style papaya salad with the green papaya I got for super cheap at Apna Bazaar in Connecticut weeks ago! I even made the dough for my once/twice-a-year challah and left it to proof in the fridge overnight. I am planning for us to eat one loaf now, and then I’ll freeze the second loaf to await us in 2026 when we return from the Southern Hemisphere.

Kaia impatiently waited for me to finish shaving the papaya so that I could take her to Lincoln Center plaza for some scooting around. She is definitely mastering her scooter (minus some awkward turns), and she is gaining confidence using it. She loves riding it around and around the plaza reflecting pool, and then she likes to take breaks to pick up fallen autumn leaves and pebbles, pretending to “make pesto for mama.” She says she loves pesto pasta and wants to share it with me. This is her new thing whenever we’re in the Lincoln Center plaza together, with her intermittently scooting and then taking breaks to stir the special pesto pasta she makes for me in her imaginary kitchen.

We have about 2.5 weeks remaining in New York City this year. There is a lot left to do, lots of ingredients to use up, and plans still to be made. Every year seems to fly by quicker than the last, but I guess that’s how you know you are definitely getting older. I’m almost ending my 40th year, as Chris would say, yet I don’t feel close to slowing down even a bit just yet!

Cottage cheese as the new high protein food trend that I am not that into

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Before this year, the only time I ever really embraced cottage cheese was for German style cheesecake. Growing up, I remember my dad would make it once a year, either for Thanksgiving or Christmas, and I’d always sit there and watch or help him make it. Real German style cheesecake is made with quark cheese, but given that quark was not readily available in the U.S. then (and barely is now), the closest substitute easily available here is cottage cheese. It takes ages to break up the cottage cheese curds, and you need a high powered mixer to do it, but I always loved it when we got to the final step and got the cake batter silky smooth.

Cottage cheese suddenly rose in popularity this year because of everyone’s obsession with increasing their protein intake (and yes, I admittedly fall into this camp as of late). It’s considered the latest “hack” to increase protein in one’s diet, and it’s been showing up in endless different recipes. I’ve even seen it in some dosa and uttapam recipes! I finally decided I would try it out again, and I’d try using it in things like smoothies and pancakes. I figured that since Kaia likes pancakes, she wouldn’t mind it if I added cottage cheese to her pancakes.

Well, I was wrong. The cottage cheese made the pancakes more spongy, and she did not seem to appreciate this. She’d squish them in between her fingers and declare that she did not want to eat them, that she wanted ME to eat them. I’d have to cajole her to eat at least two before getting something else that she’d prefer. I tried three different recipe variations, some including pumpkin puree (because I like to add pumpkin to as many recipes as possible in the fall). Though I was able to mostly eliminate the sponginess she did not like, I found this to be far too much effort to continue attempting to use it. If trying to incorporate “healthy” or high protein ingredients into our diet ends up becoming more “work” than joy, then I don’t want to keep doing it. I have enough mental load, and this is not something I want to continue.

I finished the tiny bit of remaining cottage cheese in the fridge and mixed it into some just-cut pineapple. And even that felt like an effort for me. So, I’m declaring it now: No more cottage cheese in this house — unless I decide to make German style cheesecake.

Hosting another big meal at home for friends – this time with Indian food!

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We invited another couple over for lunch today. I was going through all the produce and ingredients I got from Apna Bazaar last week, and I figured it would be fitting to make an Indian meal. So this is what I made:

  1. Tandoori salmon 
  2. Chana dal 
  3. Paneer makhani 
  4. Aloo baingan – potato eggplant curry 
  5. Carrot and methi leaf stir fry 
  6. Jeera rice, whole wheat roti (roti were store bought)
  7. Kachumber salad (cucumber, tomato, yogurt salad with chaat masala) 
  8. Pumpkin snickerdoodles 

If you looked at the table, you’d probably think I spent ages making this meal, but I actually had just started food prep the night before. The dal, potato eggplant curry, and jeera rice were made in the Instant Pot and come together fast, especially since all three used the Quick Release setting (another situation where… if you know, you know!). The paneer makhani was made on the stove in less than 10 minutes with my magical pre-made tomato onion masala. The carrot and kasoori methi leaf stir fry took minutes, as well; the most time-consuming part of making that was ripping all the fenugreek leaves off the tough stems, which aren’t that pleasant to chew on. This was my first time using fresh methi / fenugreek leaves. I enjoyed the slight bitterness from the leaves, but like with most greens, I got sad when I saw the tiny quantity my leaf bunch cooked down to. The kachumber salad was basically just chopped tomato and cucumber mixed with yogurt and my homemade chaat masala mix and took five minutes to throw together. I made my own tandoori masala blend the night before and mixed it with some mashed garlic and ginger, dried methi, and salt, and let it sit before broiling for about seven minutes when my friends arrived.

What I’ve realized after making lots and lots of large meals is that what actually takes the most time is rarely the actual cooking time, but the mental load of thinking about what to make, what ingredients I already have vs. what I need to get, what is perishable, what needs to be defrosted and when, and everything related to that. I usually enjoy this process, and I especially like cooking for friends in slightly larger groups. But sometimes lately, I get annoyed by it when thinking of balancing what to make with what we already have. As a result of this, I’m trying harder to first think about pantry and freezer ingredients we have (that I want to use up), and then planning what to make around that. It can be hard to do this when you are someone like me and has endless ingredients, though. So I’ve stopped myself from buying any dry pantry items until I get through a good chunk of what I already have now. I mean, I cannot expect my pantry to be a mini store, can I…?

But my end thought here really is: I cannot imagine making Indian food semi regularly without my Instant Pot. It’s truly one of the best kitchen appliances I’ve ever owned. My loyalty to this contraption is quite deep and cannot be disavowed.

Granola vs. muesli vs. Bircher muesli

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Many many moons ago, or about 13 years ago, Chris was trying to get me up to speed on differences in food and speech between Australian and American culture. One of the things he taught me at the time, which I have since realized is factually incorrect, is that what Americans call “granola,” Australians and British people call “muesli.” Initially, given I had no reason to think he was wrong, I believed him. But then when going down the grocery aisle at a Cole’s or Woolworth’s in Australia, I thought it was odd that all the things labeled “muesli” just looked like a bunch of raw oats with some nuts and dried fruit mixed in. There’s no way that Australians actually ate raw oats on the regular, right? The body doesn’t digest raw oats as easily as cooked oats, so this just seemed odd to me.

My suspicions were later confirmed. As ChatGPT sums it up, these are the key differences between granola and muesli: At a high level, granola is baked, crunchy, and sweet. Muesli is raw, softer, and less sweet. They are not the same thing.

In more detail: granola is baked and made crunchy with oil and sweeteners like maple syrup or honey. People like me who enjoy (homemade) granola love the large crunchy chunks or clusters. There’s pretty much always some combination of oats, nuts and seeds in it. And it’s usually eaten with yogurt or milk in cereal. Sometimes, you can even just snack on it by hand as you would chips. Muesli, on the other hand, is always raw, soft/chewy when soaked with a loose texture, with little to no added sugar. The base is usually a combination of oats, nuts, seeds, and dried fruit. Muesli usually soaked overnight in milk/yogurt and eaten cold.

The concept of muesli comes from Bircher muesli, which was first created in Switzerland by Dr. Bircher-Benner. Bircher muesli has a lot in common with overnight oats, but tends to be heavier the emphasis on adding nuts, seeds, dried fruit, and also including yogurt (and sometimes even sweetened condensed milk!) for added creaminess and mouthfeel. During the pandemic, I ate a lot of overnight oats, but I eventually got bored of it. When I thought about eating a little breakfast on weekdays again in the last month (I normally don’t eat breakfast on weekdays), I thought about a Bircher muesli recipe I found on the Wall Street Journal (never thought I’d get a recipe recommendation from there!) that sounded good. I changed it up a bit and made a big batch for breakfast this week. And it was really satisfying and definitely kept me quite full and satisfied. This is what the base looks like (for 6-8 servings). The base is soaked overnight to allow the oats to “cook”:

1 C rolled oats
1/4 C unsweetened coconut flakes
1/2 C raw cashews, chopped, toasted
1/2 C raw almonds, chopped, toasted

1/4 C pumpkin seeds, toasted
1/4 C ground flaxseeds
1/4 C chia seeds
6 Medjool dates, pitted and diced
1/4 C raisins or dried cranberries/cherries
1 Tbsp honey
3.5 C cow, almond, or oat milk
1 C whole milk yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
 
To add right before serving:
2 firm pears, cored and shredded with skin on
Fresh fruit, such as blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, or sliced plums

The ingredient I remember I’ve neglected for a while has been chia seeds. I’ve had a weird relationship with chia seeds. Lots of people love to add them to smoothies, but I absolutely hate them in smoothies. They stick to and expand in liquid, and they get physically stuck in everything: blender jar, blades, the sides of the kitchen sink, MY MOUTH. But I realize that in Bircher muesli, they are perfect because they create a pudding-like consistency when mixed with yogurt and milk. I’m definitely going to keep making this. Though I’ll be honest and reveal that I do something a bit sacrilege with my Bircher muesli: I do not eat it cold the way you are supposed to, as I hate cold oats. I always warm my bowl up a little.

The magic of tomato onion masala is re-discovered once again! And the lesson of not ignoring the tried-and-true classics

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Years ago when I started getting into Indian cooking, I kept reading about “onion masala” or “tomato onion masala” on Indian cooking blogs and was wondering what it was. It was a “hack” to expedite Indian cooking, which is notoriously complex given the number of spices and ingredients the average dish uses. With some upfront work, as in, stewing down tomatoes, onions, garlic, ginger, and various spices, you can easily portion out 1/4-1/2 cup sized pucks, store in your freezer, and take a few pucks out every time you want to whip up an Indian dish that used tomato and onion in its base. I was obsessed with this idea, and I always kept frozen portions of tomato onion masala in our freezer. It allowed us to have relatively quick, home cooked, from-scratch meals just the day after coming back from many long-haul, international trips, when there was barely anything fresh in our fridge. I felt pretty proud of myself for embracing this. It was healthy, economical, and delicious eating.

After years of having the tomato onion masala easily on hand in the freezer, though, I started getting bored of it. I wanted to experiment with other spices and flavors. Eventually, my pre-portioned tomato onion masala went neglected in the bottom of my freezer bin. But then after filling our freezer to the brim a bit too much recently, I re-discovered my frozen masala and decided I didn’t want to let it get freezer burn and had to use it up. During our Connecticut long weekend, we stopped at Apna Bazaar and picked up a number of fresh Indian ingredients and beans, and I figured this would be a good opportunity to use up my tomato onion masala.

I took out five pucks of 1/4-cup portions of the tomato onion masala from the freezer today after dinner and thawed it a bit (in a memorable moment when I had the frozen pucks in a bowl on the kitchen counter, Chris was confused as to what they were. So he asked, “What are these balls?”). I set it over the stove with some butter, a few spices, salt, and blended some “cashew cream” (cashews plus water) into it. Then, I tossed in cubed paneer from Apna Bazaar and added another random small puck of frozen heavy cream I still had (who knows from when…). After simmering it for a few minutes, I tasted it. And… it was delicious. It tasted perfect! Not to brag, but it really tasted restaurant quality and had a really sumptuous mouth feel. I felt a bit guilty that I neglected this tomato onion masala that I’d previously spent so much time making in advance for future quick-cook meals. But in that moment, I vowed to myself that I would never take for granted the magic of pre-made tomato onion masala ever again. It always has a place in my heart and freezer.

Cooking with chanterelles – an autumn luxury and privilege

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I love mushrooms. They are one of my favorite foods on earth. The more irregular and funny looking they are, the more likely I am enamored by them and just want to find ways to cook with them and get them in my belly. Over the years, I’ve had so many delicious varieties of mushrooms. In Asian cooking, shiitake and enoki mushrooms are extremely common. Since graduating from college, I’ve been buying king oyster and trumpet mushrooms more regularly. And while I am obsessed with morel mushrooms, they are almost impossible to find…and when you do, quite cost prohibitive.

One mushroom that had remained on the “out of reach” list for ages were chanterelles, a rare, delicate, and difficult to cultivate mushroom. They cannot be commercially cultivated and can only be grown wild, thriving on tree roots. Chanterelle mushrooms form symbiotic, mycorrhizal relationships with tree roots in a way that is so complex that humans still have not figured out how to reproduce this in a controlled farm environment. And thus, every chanterelle mushroom anyone buys has been foraged by hand in the wild and not farmed. They also have a very short season that is usually late summer to fall, and their yield heavily depends on rainfall, temperature, and soil quality being at optimal levels.

Given this, it’s been pretty usual that if I go to Whole Foods or a fancier grocery store (regular grocery stores will rarely have chanterelles!) around September to October each year that I will see chanterelles being sold for anywhere from $28-50 per pound. While I have loved them and have enjoyed them in a couple tasting menus we’d indulged in, I never had the pleasure of cooking with them myself until during the pandemic. In 2020, we spotted them at a Costco for about $12-13/pound, and I obviously pounced on it. And then once again during our Costco trip this past Sunday, I got two pounds of them for the same cost. Sure, they’re expensive and are priced like fancy meat even at this far-cheaper price, but to me, chanterelles are worth it as a rare autumn treat.

Today, I made my chanterelles two ways: I seared and tossed them into a cashew-cream based sauce with short pasta, along with cannellini beans and baby bella mushrooms for extra protein and mushroominess; and for something I hadn’t previously done but wanted to do, I seared them and tossed fresh green herbs into them, adding them atop crusty Breadivore bordelaise sourdough and a generous pat of salted French butter. It was simple, delicious goodness. But once I finished cooking my two pounds of chanterelles down and looked at my final dishes, I looked down and sadly noted how much they shrank down in volume, just like all my greens, into just a teeny tiny fraction of what I originally started with. This is often why when people ask me how I can possibly eat all of <name whatever squash, vegetable, bag of greens at Costco>, I tell them that it always cooks down to far, far less than what you’d think. So while it looks like we bought a lot, we”ll likely get through it in just two meals each!

Lyman Orchards Corn Maze and a bi-annual Costco pitstop

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I don’t recall ever doing a corn maze during the fall growing up. I remember going to pumpkin patches, but the only corn maze I ever remember going to was out in Long Island in 2011 with some friends — at night. That corn maze was supposed to be spooky and “haunted,” and the only lights we had were via flashlights we were given or our own phones. Chris brought us to Lyman Orchards today in Middlefield, CT, for a corn maze and an apple stop. The theme was very fitting for us given what we’d recently eaten: it was Connecticut pizza themed! Kaia loved running through the corn maze and insisted on always going ahead of us and being first. She would also always squeal with high pitched delight every time she saw a corn on the cob that had its kernels peeking out. It was a really fun fall activity, and made even more fun by watching how happy and engaged Kaia was the whole time. Although I didn’t have a “bad” childhood, when I look at her and see how happy she is with all the experiences we’ve given her, it almost makes me relive my own childhood again just seeing how much joy she is experiencing. I love seeing her get excited about the leaves, the different seasons, and the different seasonal activities.

And of course, one last stop before we headed back to New York was at Costco! I loved the Costco experience in South Windsor, CT. Even though it was a Sunday, it wasn’t even remotely crowded. It actually felt quite quiet. There were barely any lines at checkout. The sample stations were quiet and not bombarded by endless hoards. The restroom was an easy in and out for us. And when we had a little lunch at the Costco food court, Chris easily got us a table and seats.

Here are some of the biggest highlights of what we discovered today:

Tim Tams (Australian formulation — WITH GOLDEN SYRUP ): Chris was very excited to see these, and of course, he added it to our cart to “tide him over” longer until he gets his Arnott’s haul replenished.

Kirkland Signature Belgian Chocolate Biscuit Cookie Tin: Chris’s favorite and present to himself each fall Costco trip we go on. 🙂

A WHOLE DUCK: For just over $16 grown at a farm in Indiana. I may finally use those duck class skills I learned a few years ago and get to work!

Wild chanterelle mushrooms: We haven’t scored these since the pandemic era. Chanterelles tend to grow in the fall and have a subtle but delicious earthy flavor. When they are in peak, they can go for anywhere from $28-50/pound, which is too much for me to stomach. I got two pounds of these babies today for $12.99/pound weeeee.

Nielsen Massey Vanilla Bean Paste: This brand always comes up in food forums I’m in where professional pastry chefs discuss products they love and absolutely need. I figured I’d never buy it because it was so expensive. But then Chris spotted it at Costco next to the vanilla extract and vanilla beans. I initially skimmed it over because I didn’t see the brand name. But when I did, I did a double take and scrutinized it to death, then Googled it to make sure this was the same product. A 10-ounce bottle of this magic was $19.99. For pricing reference, if you buy an 8-ounce bottle on Williams-Sonoma, it’s currently going for $47.95. What a deal! It’s best to use this product for baked goods where the vanilla flavor really needs to shine… and where you want to “see” the vanilla bean flecks.

Mrs. Meyers Hand Soap Combo Pack: Okay, so I’m kind of like Martha Stewart in that I do really like certain hand soaps over others, and Mrs. Meyers never fails. I almost got the same holiday scented set as last year until we came across the pack that includes the Tomato Vine scent, which I’d been curious about for a while because I’d read it had a near cult following!

We also got some good deals for clothes for Pookster, including a four-piece rainbow top and bottom set, a Minnie Mouse sweater, top, and pants set. And as the clothing section at Costco just keeps getting better and better, we also found some nice onesies that were Winnie the Pooh and Simba themed for some recent babies who have joined the family. It was a massive Costco haul this time, but I have zero doubt everything we got will go into good use (or into our bellies!).

Browned butter and cozy kitchen delights

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As I’ve gotten older, I can definitely feel my metabolism slowing down. I can’t eat as much food as I used to. I definitely cannot eat the same sweet things I once ate as a kid or even as a 20-something-year-old. Some sweets I choose to stay away from completely (hello, candy in general and sour belts, which I was obsessed with as a little kid), and other things I have in very small quantities. Once upon a time, I could probably just sit there and eat five medium sized freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in a single sitting. Now, I can eat… one. And then if I have made them myself, I need to really space them out. And as we all know, homemade desserts have a very short shelf life (no preservatives!), and they can get dry quickly given they are all natural. So, if you don’t finish them within a certain time, they are just nowhere as delicious and moist as day one or two. Given this, I bake desserts only when we have company or are bringing baked goods to someone else, with the exception of “healthy” baked treats for Kaia.

The problem with this is that baking is one of my biggest and first loves in life. I have so many fond, happy memories of baking in my aunt’s kitchen upstairs. Most of those bake sessions were from box mixes, but as a little kid, I didn’t understand, nor would I probably have cared. I was actually making something that my family and I could eat, and that seemed so special and amazing to me when I was four, five, and six years old. When you think about it, it’s still actually quite amazing: it’s amazing to be able to share food you have made with your own time, effort, and hands with the ones you love most. It’s special to nourish the ones who mean the most to you. Because what is more important than fueling our bodies with sustenance?

So last night, I browned butter for the first time in ages. In my early 20s, I used to do this a few times a year for special treats like browned butter chocolate chip cookies, financiers, among other rich delights. I browned an entire cup or 240 grams of butter, and the house smelled so sweet, caramelly, toasty, and utterly delightful. I used it for the browned butter pumpkin cookies I made my postpartum friend, which I will be bringing to her place tomorrow. She recently had a baby, and I wanted to bring her more food and cook for her. She texted me and said she was really enjoying the hawthorn tea blend I made for her, especially because it had cinnamon, and it felt very cozy for fall. So given this, I figured browned butter pumpkin cookies would go with her “autumn cozy” feelings.

I was packing up the cookies this evening and decided to try one fresh. And it was truly delicious: rich, pumpkin spicy flavor, with caramel notes from the browned butter. The sugar level was perfect and melded into the butter like a dream. It was soft and chewy, with this almost addictive texture that mirrors that of snickerdoodles. When I thought more about it, these really are the pumpkin and spice version of snickerdoodles! My snickerdoodle-obsessed friend would have loved these cookies. Chris even declared these cookies “Tim Tam level,” which coming from him is quite high praise. Scientifically Sweet recipes never fail to be a delicious success.

I drew the line at one cookie for today, though. Now that I am nearing 40, I think a lot more about how many sweets and rich foods I eat. That single cookie had about 11 grams of sugar. 😀 I loved it, but I do not need to eat too many of them in a single sitting.

Very “clean” baking mixes

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The neighbor I’ve been hanging out with while having play dates with our kids gave me a Simple Mills box mix for banana muffins or bread loaf. She said she has so many of this brand’s mixes that she’s gotten bored of the flavors, and she thought that maybe I could work my baking magic and jazz it up. The slogan is, “Only purposeful ingredients. Nothing artificial, ever.” The mix is gluten free and vegan (though it does call for three eggs and suggest using yogurt in place of water to increase moistness of the muffins). And when you look at the “simple ingredients” list, it just lists these: Almond Flour, Banana, Organic Coconut Sugar, Arrowroot, Organic Coconut Flour, Baking Soda, Organic Cinnamon, Sea Salt.

Based on the above ingredients list, there’s no weird artificial or “natural flavors.” No dyes or preservatives are listed. No weird names of things that the average person cannot pronounce are here. The average grocery store box mix has preservatives like propionate, potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, and other emulsifiers. Simple Mills really is what it states: straightforward, simple ingredients. I wanted to believe this had to be good, so I decided to whip it out today and see how it was.

The instructions say to use three eggs, 1/2 cup water, and 1/3 cup oil. I used two eggs, replaced one egg with a “flax egg” (1 tablespoon ground flaxseed to 3 tablespoons water), replaced the water with yogurt as the suggestions stated to increase moistness, and used 1/3 cup coconut oil. The mixture seemed really thick, so I added some coconut and oat milk to thin it out a bit. I also wanted to add more spices because the only spice mentioned here was cinnamon, so I added some ground cardamom, ginger, allspice, nutmeg, and mace. I mixed it all up, added the batter into my mini muffin pan, and baked it. The bake time was also longer than I thought by about 50 percent, which was weird, but I’d rather have done muffins than liquidy ones.

Once the muffins were done and cooled, I tried one. It did not poof up the way wheat flour muffins do and was quite flat on top, but the flavor was pretty decent. The texture was soft and on pair with other almond-flour-based breads/muffins I’d had before. The spice flavor was very good. The one downside, though, was that there was absolutely zero taste of any banana. The spices, coconut milk, and oat milk had completely drowned out any banana fruit flavor.

I had one first and didn’t tell Chris what I thought. I did not want to influence what he tasted or thought. After he had one, he immediately said, “Not bad. Did you put something Indian in it?”