Blender Muffins

If there’s one recipe I’ve made more than any other in the past two years, it’s these blender muffins, so I had to include them in my new book, The Forest Feast Road Trip. They come together quickly and are great for a snack on the road, after school, or on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Plus, I can add a handful of almost any vegetable to the blender and my three children still love them.

Road tripping has saved us these last couple of years. A weekend adventure by car with thoughtfully planned hiking and swimming stops has felt safe and done wonders for the whole family’s morale. Even though I grew up in California, I have discovered so many new places just a day’s drive from our cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains. In creating my latest vegetarian cookbook, my family visited farms, wineries, ranches, orchards, markets, and restaurants — each of which has offered me new culinary inspiration.

I sprinkled these muffins with chopped almonds after driving through miles of almond groves in California’s Central Valley and stirred in chopped dates after visiting a date farm near Palm Springs. I’ve thrown in chunks of rainbow carrots from the farmers market, stirred in golden California raisins, and thrown in pieces of zucchini from our summer garden. And my picky kids still go for seconds!

Our kids end up eating so many crackers, bagels, bread, and pasta on a weekly basis that I like to offer a flour-free snack sometimes. I got the idea to make these muffins in a blender from my friends Sonja and Alex Overhiser of A Couple Cooks. This recipe is inspired by their healthy banana bread muffins, which are both gluten-free and refined sugar-free. The size of the bananas and the varying add-ins can change the consistency of the muffins a bit, but we find that we like them regardless. I’ve blended them on high for a super-smooth texture and on low for a chunkier, grainier bite and while everyone seems to like both variations, I tend to go somewhere in the middle.