In just a couple of short weeks school will be going back. Back to early rising, back to strict bedtimes and (almost) military style routines, back to a mad rush to leave the house with all 4 children fed, washed, clothed, packed and ready by 8am. Gosh,  I love holidays!!!

Almost always porridge is the go for breakfast at our place. They all enjoy it and I can make up a big saucepan-full and everyone is happy. But for some reason, on some mornings, the getting ready process just doesn’t work well and we run late (please tell me that this happens to everyone!!).

To help on those occasions, I like to have these muffins in the freezer so I can give them a decent breakfast that they can eat while we’re walking to school. Most muffins are pretty well cakes in disguise but these guys have fruit sugars and lots of fibre and wholegrains to keep their little bodies going.

See below the recipe for a coeliac friendly option

• 2 medium overripe bananas (I keep some frozen)
• 4 Gluten-free Weetbix
• 50g rolled oats
• 6 large medjool dates, pitted
• 80g melted tasteless coconut oil, or other light tasting oil
• 235g milk of choice (we mostly use oat milk or unsweetened vanilla almond milk)
• 200g spelt flour (I do half wholemeal)
• 2 tsp GF baking powder
• OPTIONAL: 1/2 cup frozen blueberries or 2 tbsp Chocolate Drinking mix

Place the oats in the food processor and blitz until fine (Speed 6, 10 seconds).

Add in the weet-bix, flour and baking powder and process well (Speed 5, 10 seconds). Tip out and set aside.

Place the banana, milk and oil in the bowl and begin processing, adding the dates one at a time through the chute at the top. Process until the dates are finely chopped and evenly distributed. (Speed 4 whilst adding the dates, and then up to speed 7 for 10 seconds).  This also works really well in a blender or nutribullet.

Add dry mix to wet and process until combined (Speed 4, 12 seconds). I think this is has a lighter result if you fold through by hand though.

I normally separate the mix into 2 at this point as I have 1 child who doesn’t like blueberries (weird!). Fold the blueberries through the mix you do want them in and then scoop mix into a lined muffin tin.

Place into a preheated moderate oven and bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown and skewer comes out clean.

Makes 14 muffins. They freeze well and are especially yummy served slightly warm.

To make these coeliac friendly: Use 1 extra weet-bix and 1 tbsp rolled quinoa to replace the oats. To replace the spelt, use 200g GF flour mix. Increase the milk up to 240mls.

If you don’t have or enjoy dates then you could use a few tbsp of maple syrup or even coconut sugar in their place.

They are also particularly yummy if you replace the dates and berries with 2 tablespoons of my chocolate drinking mix (gives them a great nutritional boost too!)

Sometimes I make these and remove the oats and weet-bix with 1 tbsp each of Sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds and chia seeds, plus 25g raw almond, 1 tbsp psyllium and 30g rolled quinoa. Milled down and stirred through the flour – this gives an especially good result when you’re using a gluten free flour.

Enjoy 🙂