PhD-Comps-Muffins

My dearest sister is taking her comprehensive exams today to get one step closer to her PhD! I wanted to do something special for Rebecca because she's been studying her butt off for the past many months. And now that she is living with her hunk-of-a-man and no longer with me, I figured she may be in need of some lovin' from Regina's kitchen.

I got this recipe from my favorite blogging woman, Ree (Pioneer Woman, P-Dub, PW, etc.). Seriously. Ree's blog is out of this world. I believe I have raved about her before, so let's get to the point. Ree's Mom's muffins made a special appearance on her blog last week and caught my eye. Here is the original recipe.  I pretty much followed it to a T except halving the sugar and scraping the raisins (didn't have any) and brought some additional flours to the party.

These were very tasty and cakey! But they came out almost too sweet for me. (Probably next time I'll reduce the brown sugar even more....I know...I'm weird.) And I also did a smaller batch with some blueberries because the Love Of My Life loves blueberries, and I know he'll want to try these, too. :)

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cups oat flour
1/4 cups buckwheat
1/4 cups oat bran
1/4 cup ground flaxseed/flaxseed meal
1 cup Regular Oats
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/2+ tsp cinnamon
1/2 cups pecans, chopped and toasted

1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1/2 cup applesauce
1 whole banana, mashed  (Rebecca hide your eyes!!)
1/4 cup molasses

(Rebecca... You don't see the mashed bananas.... you're distracted by the flowers) :)

Directions

1.   Preheat oven to 350F.
2.   Add buttermilk, egg, applesauce, banana, and molasses to a big mixing bowl. Whisk together.
3.   Add all of the dried ingredients and nuts to another mixing bowl and mix.
4.   Pour the dried ingredients into the wet-ingredients bowl and mix together. Let it stand for a couple of minutes. The batter will begin to rise and get fluffy.
4. a)    I added blueberries to half of the batter so I could try out blueberry muffins.
5.   Fill the cupcake pan cups  (well greased or lined with cupcake paper) almost to the top.
6.   Bake for about 18 minutes.
7.   Serve with butter (oh no!) or next to a pile of Greek yogurt and berries! :)