HLS 2012 WILD HARVEST Breakfast Showdown

In all the travelling I’ve been doing coupled with the some blog refurbishment I haven’t officially announced that I will be attending my first ever blogger conference, the 2012 Healthy Living Summit in Boston! 

You might have noticed my badge though!

I am so excited to attend! I’ve never met any other bloggers in real life so I’m a little nervous but reading through all the recaps from last years event I know I’m going to have a wonderful time! Plus, I’ve already started participating in the event through the WILD HARVEST Breakfast Recipe Contest! When registering for the HLS all attendees were asked if they’d like to receive free WILD HARVEST organic products from SUPERVALU, INC. and create a breakfast recipe to be entered into the contest. Free organic food and the chance to get creative in the kitchen, how could I decline!

When I got home from my first month of travelling my brother told me that I had received a box full of books, which I thought was odd because I hadn’t ordered any. Well it turns out the “book” he saw was really a big box of granola… someone isn’t very observant. The box was full of yummy treats! Animal crackers, granola, raisins, peanut butter, apple sauce, spices, black beans and  some delicious looking mango salsa!

The wheels started turning in my head as soon as I saw the contents of the box! I noticed that I had apple sauce and peanut butter something very similar to the ingredients of my new found best snack ever: peanut butter & apple butter on graham crackers! Apple butter is a whole new thing for me, I vaguely remember hearing about it before but had never had it until my recent trip to Gatlinburg. If you’ve never had it either it basically tastes like lightly sweetened apple pie filling pureed and is amazing!  When I returned home I checked the grocery store for apple butter but was very disappointed to see the only brand of apple butter was chocked full of high fructose corn syrup, nothing like the homemade jar from Gatlinburg.

The breakfast when I discovered the delicious snack!

So I started brainstorming some peanut butter and apple butter combination recipes. I initially thought of making a peanut butter and apple butter banana bread loaf (which I still might in the future) but the purpose of the showdown is for winner’s recipe to be featured at breakfast during the conference so I needed something that was easier to serve in individual portions. The product of that thought was peanut butter and apple butter muffins!

YourDailyGrace’s PB & Apple Butter Muffins

Yields 12 muffins

Apple Butter Ingredients

1 24 oz. jar of WILD HARVEST Organic Apple Sauce

2/3 cup of organic maple syrup

1 Tb. ground cinnamon

1/2 t. salt

1/4 t. WILD HARVEST Organic Ground Ginger

Messy baking in the Beach House kitchen!

Apple Butter Directions

1. Mix all ingredients into a saucepan over medium heat.

2. Stir often while bringing the mixture to a rapid simmer.

3. Turn down the heat to low and continue slowly simmering for 30 minutes, stir frequently.

4. Allow a spoonful to cool and taste, adjust the spices to your liking.

5. Continue simmering for an additional 15 minutes.

6. Allow to cool. 7. Once cool set aside 1/2 cup of apple butter for the recipe and a return the remaining back to the jar. And you’ll have lots of apple butter to enjoy!

Simmering Apple Butter

Muffins Ingredients

1 3/4 Unbleached all-purpose flour or white whole wheat flour

2/3 cup milk of your choice

1/3 cup sugar

1/3  brown sugar

1/4 cup WILD HARVEST Organic Creamy Peanut Butter

2 t. baking powder

1 t. vanilla extract

1 t. apple pie spice (optional)

1/2 t. salt

Filling Ingredients

1/3 cup WILD HARVEST Organic Creamy Peanut Butter

1/3 cup apple butter  

Streusel Ingredients

1/2 cup of WILD HARVEST Cherry Vanilla, crushed into small pieces

2 Tb. melted butter or vegan margarine

Crushing the granola the old fashioned way,

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prep a muffin pan with muffin liners or grease the pan.

2. In a bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt and spices.

3. In a separate bowl combine the sugars, milk, peanut butter and vanilla. Mix well.

4. Add the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.

5. The next step is layering the muffin batter into the tin. The first layer is a scoop of batter, followed by about a 1/2 Tb. each of peanut butter and apple butter, and then another scoop of batter.

6. Mix the granola with the melted butter. Sprinkle the mix over top of the muffins.

7. Bake for 20 minutes and enjoy!

Bowls full of ingredients…

Layer 1: Batter.

Layer 2: Apple Butter & Peanut Butter.

Layer 3 & 4: More batter and of course, streusel!

Fresh out of the oven!

Look the butters peaking through the muffin…yum!

This muffins looks ready for a showdown! 

Ever the procrastinator I am finishing this post a mere 12 hours before the deadline but to be fair I would have been done 24 hours ahead, yay 12 whole hours before! But thanks to internet connection problems at the beach house and then a gigantic “Has my hard drive crashed” scare courtesy of my 4-year-old laptop, I was just a bit delayed. I’m very excited to see what others came up with! I’ve already spied a delicious looking quiche submitted by FoodFash, I know I’d love to have a slice of that at the conference!

We’ll see if they like my recipe I guess because they will actually be recreating all the contest submission! I hope they have a blog on the test kitchens because that would be very neat! I know I have creativity and taste covered but these are quite decadent muffins, however if I had been at home and not a rental beach house I would have made them all vegan by using almond milk and vegan margarine. Making them ever so slightly healthier:) Win or lose it was fun to participate and I cannot wait for the HLS, thank you to WILD HARVEST for being a Gold Sponsor!

*SUPERVALU INC. provided the above WILD HARVEST products for free for the purpose of this blog entry and the 2012 WILD HARVEST Blogger Recipe Contest.