Sunflower Seed Muffins: Banana Oat Version, for a Rainy April Day

A couple of bananas were getting soft when I was scouting recipes last night, and I decided they'd go into morning muffins. I also wanted to experiment with sunflower seeds. Looking through recipes for the seeds, I noticed that some used "roasted" sunflower seeds, and some used raw. General consensus among the online nutrionists is, "Both raw and roasted seeds are nutritious and offer zinc, protein, folate, vitamin E and magnesium." Good deal, right?

I've had mixed results with toasting nuts in terms of timing and temperature, but it always brings out the flavor. I liked this process: Preheat the oven to 350ºF and sprinkle a single layer of sunflower seeds on a shallow baking pan. Pop into the oven and prepare to stir them regularly. The instructions I found said 30 minutes, but when I pulled out my seeds at 10 minutes to stir them, they were already clearly toasted and a quick taste confirmed they had become nicely crunchy. I definitely didn't want burned seeds, so ... I stopped at the 10-minute mark. After they cooled, I poured them into a clean lidded jar, as I had about a cup and knew I wouldn't be using them all the next morning.

Sunday morning, newspapers, coffee/tea, and baking: I used a standard banana muffin recipe here, with some extra cinnamon and nutmeg added; I only used 1 cup of unbleached flour (for a 12-muffin recipe, just under 2 cups is usual), plus 1/2 cup of rolled oats and 1/2 cup of oat flour, and I included 1/3 cup of toasted sunflower seeds.

Half an hour of baking at 350ºF was perfect. A nice treat for a rainy day, sweet with some crunch and lots of nutrition. Nope, it won't fit into the Paleo system that I'm also trying out ... but sometimes when an April shower strikes, it's better to be comfy and cozy anyway.