Monkey Hear, Monkey Do

My sister commented on my Salba pancake post from last week, mentioning how she makes my Salba Banana Muffin recipe all the time, and that her morning is just not complete without them. xo sis! Well, I haven't made those muffins in quite a while, probably six months or more. But, as soon as she mentioned them, I had a hankering to make them. So, here you see my Salba Banana Muffins (from my group of foodtv.ca recipes). (reminder, if you make any of these foodtv.ca recipes, be sure to refer to my edits page here)

Do you see the background pumpkin in the pic? It's one of our Hallowe'en pumpkins that we carved. We decided to carve a few, decorate a couple others with buttons and pipe cleaners, and also saved a small pumpkin to be the special annual 'Mr. Pumpkin Head', as you see here. Here is the full shot of our big carved pumpkin. Our older girl asked to have this be the "happy mommy pumpkin" since we already had two smaller 'spooky' pumpkins. I've gotten used to all of their toys/stuffies/figurines having family units, but I wasn't expecting it for our jack o' lanterns! Funny. Kidlets love Hallowe'en. Okay, so do us big kids. :)

Back to the muffins, I decided to make them with spelt flour instead of w/w pastry flour. I made two batches, and the first batch I used almost 2 1/2 cups of spelt flour. The muffins were good, but the batter was just a little dense. The second batch I used 2 1/4 cups of spelt flour, and the muffins were perfect! Tender and moist and magically delicious! As you know from my recipes, when you substitute spelt flour in a recipe where wheat flour has been used, you typically need a touch extra spelt flour for the wheat flour measurement. It varies with a given recipe, so some trial and error is sometimes required. So, my wheat-free followers, if you decide to make these muffins wheat-free and are using spelt flour, be sure to use 2 1/4 cups of spelt flour, and not much more.

After reading my sister's comments, and almost immediately needing to bake those muffins again, I was reminded how powerful our thoughts and suggestions are... and even more, how greatly influenced we are by an image and by advertising. We all know this, but I think we forget how impressionable folks are watching an ad for a burger or ice-cream sundae. If only some of our collective food blogging photos could reach tv, huh?!

Anyhow, thanks sis for the reminder... got any other food ideas for me? :)