You all know that I love my sweet treats. I do. I do.  And I like to throw in a "healthy'ish" recipe once in a while too.  This recipe is made simple by using a protein pancake mix.  I personally love Kodiak pancake mixes, but I've also heard great things about Birch Benders.  These little muffins pack in some great taste and they don't last long at all.  The little hands grab them quickly.

Here we go!

Ingredients
(makes approx. 24 mini muffins)
-1 2/3 cup Kodiak Chocolate Chip Power Cake Pancake Mix (or use your choice of protein pancake mix)
-1/2 cup sugar
-2 eggs
-1 cup pumpkin puree
-1 TBS pumpkin pie spice

Directions
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and prepare a mini muffin tin with non-stick cooking spray. Mix the eggs, sugar and pumpkin puree together.  Then add the dry ingredients of the pancake mix and pumpkin pie spice.  Stir together until combined.  Fill each mini muffin well approximately 2/3 full with batter.  Bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick can be inserted and comes out clean. I suggest watching the muffins around 17 minutes just in case (mostly because I have a habit of walking away and forgetting!).

​Allow to cool and then enjoy....if your kids save you any!

I jumped on the sourdough bandwagon about a year and a half ago. It had been something on my "baking bucket list" that intimidated me.  I dove in with the help of Leann over at Lion's Bread and have loved it ever since. I've made plenty of mistakes.  I've had bread that didn't rise as much as I would like.  Bread that was really tough to cut.  It all tasted great though and I think homemade bread is food for the soul. No carbs is not an option for me.

Once I had my sourdough up to strength for baking, I began to look for and think about recipes that would use the starter discard. I love these sourdough waffles over on Girl Versus Dough. I often double the batch and keep some in the fridge for breakfasts throughout the week.  Also, this pizza crust on Little Spoon Farm is to die for.  It takes a little bit more time and effort than a conventional pizza crust but the charring on the cast iron skillet kicks this up to serious restaurant quality.  I'm itching for fresh basil and tomato season around here to use with this recipe.

This mini muffin recipe has a subtle sourdough flavor from the discard, the recipe comes together in minutes and it's lightly sweet.  My kids went through them so fast that I had to bump up my photo shoot of them because they were disappearing.  The mini muffin size is also perfect for toddlers and our almost one year old loves them served broken up into pieces.  Here's what you'll need:

Ingredients
(makes approximately 28-30 mini muffins)
-approx. 1/2 cup sourdough starter discard
-2 eggs
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-1/2 cup olive oil
-1/2 cup milk
-1/2 cup sugar
-1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
-1 tsp baking powder
-1/2 tsp salt
-1- 1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen berries

Directions
Prepare a mini muffin tin with non stick cooking spray and pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.  In a large bowl, add your starter discard, eggs, vanilla, oil and milk,  Mix together.  Add the sugar and combine.  Add in your flour, baking powder, flour and salt.  Lightly stir together the dry ingredients on top of the wet ingredients and then completely combine the batter.  Fold in the berries.

Fill the wells of the mini muffin tin approximately 3/4 full.  Bake for 16-18 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.  Allow to cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes and then transfer to a wire cooling rack.  Store in an airtight container once completely cooled.  Enjoy!

Save this simple recipe for Mother's Day or your next Spring brunch event (I may be hoping my family reads this blog...hint hint). The dough for this recipe is loosely based on my Irish Bread recipe. I have information in that post about how you can make scones from the bread recipe and those are quite good; however, my ideal scone has a more buttery texture and a bit more sugar.  The Irish Bread only has 1 TBS sugar in the entire loaf so we're going to kick up the sweetness a notch here.  The process for kneading these scones is the same as the Irish Bread, but the dough can be a little softer and stickier to work with.  It's very forgiving though.  You can add in more flour to your kneading process if it's too soft and I promise that it works out in the end.

The other key reason this recipe is simple is thanks to Bonne Maman lemon curd. 
This delicious lemon curd saves you a bunch of steps and it packs just the right amount of lemon flavor. In fact, it's so delicious that I was noticing it disappearing from my fridge and it turns out that our 7 year old was making herself sandwiches with it and absolutely loved it.  I'll let her develop that recipe for you.  In the mean time, let's get to baking some scones. 

Ingredients
For the Scones:
-3 cups all purpose flour plus more for kneading
-2 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-1/2 cup sugar
-1/2 cup butter at room temperature
-approximately 2 cups whole milk (you may use a little bit more or less here)
-1 TBS vanilla extract
-1 egg lightly beated for egg wash
-Bonne Maman Lemon Curd

For the Glaze:
-2/3 cup powdered sugar
-approx. 2 TBS milk
-1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions
​In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.  Add in the butter and use a fork, pastry cutter, the side of a spoon or your hands to mix the butter into the dry ingredients.  The flour will start to form little pea sized clumps.  Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add 1/2 the milk and the vanilla extract.  Stir together.  Slowly add in the second 1/2 of the milk.  You have enough milk once the dough is all sticky.  Sometimes this takes the full second cup.  Sometimes you will use slightly less.  Either way, you can use more or less flour in the kneading process to balance everything out.

Generously flour a cutting board or your counter top and hands.  Dump the entire batch of dough out onto the floured surface.  Knead the dough by hand by using one hand to take dough from underneath and bring it on top while using the other hand to turn the dough. This may be very messy in the beginning but it's all good. I swear.  Add more flour when needed to prevent the dough from being too sticky.  Continue this process until the dough is in a round shape with a smooth surface on the bottom.  Gently flip it over and add a dusting of flour to the top to smooth it out.  Cut the scones by first cutting the dough into quarters and then cutting those quarters in half.

Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper or non-stick cooking spray.  Place the scones on the tray distanced 2-3 inches apart. Use the back of a tablespoon or your thumb to press an indent into each scone.  This is where you are going to fill it with lemon curd.  Now, for the key step of the process.  Place the unbaked tray of scones in the freezer for 30 minutes.  You want the butter to be super cold when it goes into the oven to get that flaky, buttery scone. Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees.

Remove the scones from the freezer. Use your thumb or the back of a tablespoon to firm up the shape of the well in the scone.  Fill it with the Bonne Maman lemon curd.  Lightly beat one egg and brush some beaten egg onto the dough of the scones.  Bake for 30 minutes at 400 degrees.

Remove from the oven.  While cooling, mix together your glaze by adding all 3 ingredients to a bowl and use a fork or whisk to combine.  Once the scones are cool enough to touch, drizzle the glaze over the scones.  Enjoy!