3 c. oats

1/4 c. toasted hazelnuts

1/2 c. hazelnut flour

1/3 c. sugar

1/2 c. cocoa powder

1/2 t. salt

1 1/2 t. baking soda

2 c. water

1/4 c. agave

1/2 c. hazelnut spread (gluten-free)

1 t. vanilla extract

1/2 c. chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375º F.

Place oats and hazelnuts in a blender or Quisinart and blend until powdery. Pour into a large bowl and add the hazelnut flour, cocoa powder, sugar, salt and baking powder.

In the blender or Quisinart, combine the water, agave, vanilla and vegan hazelnut spread. Blend until hazelnut spread is incorporated into the liquids.

Pour wet mixture into dry mixture and stir until well mixed. Stir in chocolate chips.

Fill 12 muffin liners to the brim. Bake for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out mostly clean. Remove muffins to a cooling rack for at least 10 minutes before enjoying!

This batter is very wet. I do not think it needs so much liquid. I think it needs more liquid than other muffins because the oats soak up a lot of liquid, but 2 cups is a LOT of liquid. Also water is a weird choice – why not use something even slightly more flavorful, like rice milk?

Overall, whole recipe seems overly large. It essentially has almost 4 cups of flour in it, between the ground oats and the ground nuts. I need to do some playing around with the proportions in this recipe.

The original recipe calls for 3/4 c. of hazelnuts, ground fine, but I was running low on hazelnuts so I substituted some hazelnut flour I had for a portion of the hazelnuts. This worked fine, as I thought it would (hey, hazelnut flour is essentially what you are making, when you grind the hazelnuts up finely).

In the past I have made this vegan by adding a vegan nutella to the batter, but this year I could no longer source that ingredient locally so I went ahead and made them with non-vegan nutella this year.

Eat Within Your Means: Double Chocolate Hazelnut Blender Muffins

Yield: 20 muffins