Yesterday With My Children We Made......Hazelnuts Banana Muffins

As I already wrote in a previous post, we all like nuts in my family. Any kind of nuts ..... and I definitively spend more money on nuts than I do on cookies. Especially since I started baking again. My husband (and children) have a sweet tooth and since I did not enjoy baking that much before, we had a deal with my husband that he was going to be the one baking while I handle the daily cooking. As a result, he is the one who got silicone molds, baking dishes and other pastry-related accessories for Christmas or his birthday. He is the one who started keeping sweet recipes from a French cooking magazine he subscribed to for a long time. He is the one who even took a pastry class! But at the end of the year, he maybe made desserts four times max. Good desserts (his galette des rois is one of his successes), sure, but once a quarter! For someone who could eat 6 sweet crêpes or 4 madeleines without even noticing it, that's not very impressive, n'est-ce-pas? Sure, he works a lot and, hence, his time off-work is limited... mais quand même! Franchement?


Now that I am baking again to try to make you stop spending money on processed cookies realize that it's not impossible, my husband is baking even less. BUT, since he knows I am baking again, he is always coming back home, expecting something sweet to have available. "T'as pas fait un petit truc sucré?" (you did not make a little sweet thing) does he ask when he comes home. "ça fait longtemps" (it has been a while)... Maybe sweet desserts impair his memory because there is un petit truc sucré available about 4 days out of 7! I am spoiling him (but hey, nothing wrong with that, right?)! I am spoiling my children who have come to expect the same and ask for more (but at least, they help me!) ."Maman, tu pourrais nous faire de la mousse au chocolat? Et des chaussons aux pommes? Et des pains au chocolat?" (Mom, could you make Chocolate mousse? Apples Turnovers? Chocolate Croissants?)... I have enough requests and suggestions (yes, because instead of baking, now my husband suggests desserts !!) to get this blog going for another few years. And not baking at my husband's frequency, that is!

As I am trying to bake new desserts, including gluten-free, here is a recipe that was a big success among mes goûteurs. I liked it as well because it was not too sweet and it was made with hazelnut flour (ground hazelnuts). And if there are nuts in a dish, I am generally sold! Bon Appétit!

Ingredients:
- 2/3 cup (80g) hazelnut flour
- 1/2 cup (60g) brown rice flour
- 1 ts baking powder
- 1/2 ts baking soda
- 1/4 ts sea salt or Fleur de Sel
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup light brown sugar
- 7 Tbs (100g), butter (100g), melted
- 1 ts Vanilla extract
- 2 ripe bananas, pureed (with a fork)

• Pre-heat oven to 350F (175C)
• In a bowl, mix all the dry ingredients, except for the sugar. You want to make sure that the hazelnut flour is well mixed into the other ingredients.
• In a food processor, mix together the eggs and the sugar until lighter color.
• Add the melted butter, the vanilla extract and the bananas to the eggs mix.
• Add the dry elements.
• Divide among muffins or cupcakes molds.
• Bake in the oven for 20 minutes.
• Unmold and let cool on a rack. 

My Personal Comments:

• If you don't find hazelnut flour (which, unlike almond meal/flour, I have never found), you can purchase whole/crushed hazelnuts and use your food processor (or coffee grinder) to make hazelnut flour.
• If I don't manage to make a perfect hazelnut flour, I keep the tiny bits of hazelnuts. They add a little bit of crunchiness in the muffins.
• Make sure you use very ripe bananas; the recipe will taste even better