Strawberry Almond Oat Muffins (and pups!)

These are my Valentine’s Day muffins of Love :) Ok, well they aren’t really “Love” muffins, but strawberries are red and sweet and that’s good enough for me to declare them V-day appropriate!

I was pretty psyched when, in the dead of February, Whole Foods had strawberries on sale! 2 quarts/$6! I decided to buy 2 and declared that I would bake with them (and eat the rest).

But first, the day started with some group dog training at the beach! We’ve been taking Bromley to dog training class every Thursday night. Well, the woman who runs the program also offers “off-leash” training days on weekends. Lots of her current and former students gather with their humans and go for a long walk. The experienced dogs are off-leash and the newbie's are on long leashes and when they travel in the big pack the rookies learn from the veterans!

This was our first time to off-leash training. We met up at Nahant beach…and man was it cold!! But its all for our little furballs.

We all had a great time and it was good to use our training skills outside with lots of distractions.

Thankfully we bought Bromley a new fleece…definitely needed it today! It was in the high 30’s (which actually is pretty good for right now, but the sun was no where in sight and it was WINDY!)

One of those Basset’s is in our class and possible Bromley’s new girlfriend ;) They LOVE to play!

Sit. Stay. Good Dog!

Two hours later we were frozen and he was tired.

Perfect excuse for some baking!

My bff, gave me a muffin she made a few weeks ago. It was a cranberry oatmeal muffin and I loved it! I wanted to make a version using the strawberries that were now in my possession so I asked where she got the recipe. She took this Cooking Light recipe and heavily tweaked it (added oats, no OJ, used milk, added almond extract…etc). So I read it, and made my own version!

Strawberry Almond Oatmeal Muffins

pre-heat oven to 400.

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 3/4 cup White Whole Wheat Flour
• 1/2 cup All Purpose Flour
• 1/2 cup sugar (I used organic cane sugar)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg (I used 1 flax egg – 1T ground flax seed, 2T water, let sit for 10-15 min)
• 1 cup buttermilk (I used dried buttermilk, therefore added 4T of dried buttermilk powder to dry ingredients and 1 cup water to wet ingredients) or use skim milk
• 3T canola oil
• 1 tsp Almond Extract
• 6-8 strawberries, chopped
• 1/3 cup sliced almonds
• 1/4 cup white chocolate chips

Combine dry ingredients in 1 large bowl (oats to salt, including dried buttermilk powder if using). In a separate bowl combine egg, oil, buttermilk, almond extract. Add wet ingredients to dry, then fold in strawberries, almonds, and chocolate chips until combined.

Spray a 12-cup muffin in with cooking spray. Divide batter among the 12 cups. Optional: Sprinkle muffins with raw sugar, or oats, or sliced almonds.

Bake for 14-16 minutes.

Run a knife around the edges and carefully remove from pan and place onto cooling rack.

These smell sooooo good!

Hope everyone has a great Valentines day :) This is actually the first year we kind of let the day slide under the radar. We almost made some dinner plans but the places we wanted to go all had prix fix menu’s…and I HATE that! Well, specifically Valentines prix fix menus. So I’m thinking a rain check til next weekend.

Wear Pink and Eat Chocolate today!