It may surprise you to know that I am not an infallible goddess of all things cooking. I have made my fair share of mistakes in the kitchen and on the grill. Have waved to many a wing and asparagus as they fall through the grate into oblivion.  I put this as an article, more because I have a warning and a message than because I don’t have a specific place to put breakfast foods in the blog yet. (Really who doesn’t have a breakfast section on a grill blog? What am I? Crazy?!)  Anyway, where was I? RIGHT – I have a message!

So I needed something for breakfast this morning and had run out of cereal. I want to eat healthy, believe it or not I am in the process of loosing weight…and yes I am eating the food posted. I found this fantastic sounding recipe. I read it through and made sure I had the ingredients before firing up the grill to bake these beauties up.

The recipe came together beautifully. The dates, I keep them around to make sticky toffee pudding, and oats came together with the other ingredients to make a perfect batter that was light and fragrant. Then I greased the muffin tin and popped them on the grill while I got dressed for work. Yes! I admit to grilling in my pajamas, IN THE MORNING.  At 10 minutes until the muffins were supposed to be done, I went to check on them, only to find that they were nearly burnt to cinders. But they were photogenic!

Herein lies the lesson … lessons … Thoroughly read the recipe through at least twice before making, question everything that sounds suspicious, and keep an eye on what you’re cooking, you never know what can happen. I nearly lost my breakfast this morning because of that. What happened was that I had preheated the grill to 400°F as per the directions of the recipe. Now most baking takes place at 350°F or less. That should have been a red flag. But being the good little girl that I am, I usually follow the directions pretty closely on the first run through a recipe … most of the time.

So I have adjusted the recipe to account for the burning, these should be a lot better than my pretty burnt muffins. Although the innards are delicious and moist.

METHOD

1. Preheat grill to 350°F and prepare for indirect cooking.
2. Combine the flour, oats, brown sugar, baking soda, powder, salt, cinnamon and dates in a bowl. Mix the ingredients together.
3. In a large measuring cup, combine the butter, milk, yogurt, vanilla and egg. Beat the mixture together and then combine it with the dry ingredients. Mix them until they are just combined.
4. Pour the batter into a prepared muffin tin, filling the cups about ¾ of the way full. Grill bake the muffins for 20 minutes. If a toothpick comes out clean, they’re ready. If not, turn off the grill, close the lid and give them another 3 to 5 minutes.
5. Allow the muffins to cool enough to touch and eat them right away, ’cause they’re that tasty!

Okay. So I have taken into account the temperature and time that was wonky, now for the substitutions and such. As always, you can use white flour instead of whole wheat. You can add walnuts or pecans to the batter or top the muffins for a hit of protein and crunch. Feel free to soak the dates in boiling water with 1 tsp of baking soda, for an hour before draining them and adding them to the wet ingredients instead of the dry. This will break down the dates making them an integrated part of the batter, not a chunk like raisins. You can also add raisins, chocolate chips or some other little tasty tidbit as well.

Even though these came out burnt, I loved the way that the light was hitting them as I made my coffee. So I took photos anyway. It’s okay to get messy when cooking. You can make mistakes, that is how new recipes come about.

Happy Grilling!