Blueberry Banana Buckwheat Bakes

I love oatmeal for breakfast. It's already basically gluten-free (since I don't have celiac disease, I'm not worried about cross-contamination), it's so much cheaper than breakfast cereal, and it's versatile. In the summer it's great in overnight oats, mixed into yogurt with fresh fruit and nuts, or as homemade muesli with dried fruit and milk. In the winter, it's a nice, hearty, warm breakfast that fills you up. But in between seasons, I get a little sick of it.

Lately I've been wanting eggs or pancakes or smoothies instead of my classic oatmeal. And it's always nice to have muffins in the freezer to warm up when you want just one. Enter, this gluten-free buckwheat muffin alternative that's great served with a smoothie or fresh fruit on the side.

Blueberry Banana Buckwheat Bake

makes 6-8 servings

Inspired by the edible perspective's buckwheat bake

8 Tbs. raw buckwheat flour*

2 Tbs. raw buckwheat groats

1 banana

1 egg

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp vanilla

1 cup blueberries

1/2 tsp baking powder

8 Tbs almond milk

2 Tbs. chia seeds
optional for filling: 1 Tbs. coconut butter per muffin

*To make the flour, simply dump 8 Tbs. of groats into food processor and grind until it resembles coarse flour. The groat is surprisingly soft and we don't need it to be super-processed for this recipe.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

2. Mash banana with a fork until gooey and whisk in milk, vanilla, and egg.

3. Then add buckwheat flour and groats, cinnamon, blueberries, baking powder, and chia seeds.

4. Grease baking vessels. I used a 6-muffin tin as well as 2 additional small ramekins. Fill almost completely with batter-- these don't rise much.  Here, I added 1 Tbs. coconut butter halfway through filling each of the ramekins with batter for a sweet filling.

5. Bake for 25 minutes and allow to cool before removing from ramekins.

The banana and blueberries are really the only sweetener in this recipe, so my first impression was that they were really bland. However, I solved that by dumping the muffin into a small bowl, adding a drizzle of maple syrup, a splash of coconut milk and microwaving for 30 seconds. Sweet, syrupy goodness.