Leftover Brown Rice Muffins: A Pleasant Surprise

In the spirit of frugality we have been trying to waste less food. Last night I made a brown rice nut loaf and had a cup and a half of brown rice left. Generally, we find that brown rice doesn't keep well on it's own because it gets sort of dry and hard and - for me anyway - it's totally uninspiring. As a challenge, Charlie suggested I try baking something with the leftover rice.

In an attempt to lazily rise to the challenge, I just looked up a leftover brown rice muffin recipe. After reading the ingredients and tasting the batter i was completely sure that they would be totally gross. Surprise! They were really quite tasty and I'm planning to make them again.

Here is the recipe:

Note: I baked them for 17 minutes at 350 and used all purpose gluten free flour

1 1/4 c Whole wheat flour 2 tb Brown sugar 2 ts Baking powder 2 Eggs 2/3 c Skim milk 1/4 c Vegetable oil 1/4 ts Almond extract 1 c Cooked brown rice Credit: BOYD NARON LEFTOVER RICE MUFFINS Stir first three ingredients together. Beat remaining ingredients, stirring rice in last. Combine two mixtures just until moistened. Spoon into 12 muffin cups. Bake at 440 degrees for 20 minutes. 127 calories per serving.

Favourites from the past

This is a cake that Charlie and my sisters go crazy for. it's a vegan pumpkin cake with a 'cream cheese' frosting. I'll definitely post my recipe for this sometime soon.


A vegan lavender lemon 'cheesecake', which looked much prettier than it tasted.

This was a 'Black bottom silk peanut butter pie' from Vegan with a vengeance

Clearly not vegan, but a yummy breakfast we made in Italy and I like the photo.

A cranberry sauce in the making from this last Thanksgiving. I took a basic recipe and added some fresh squeezed orange juice and red wine - zest too. I like to add zest ALL the time.

Also not vegan. Shortbread with chocolate drizzle and salted pistachios. Kind of time consuming but good. I'm actually planning to play around with a gluten free shortbread, so stayed tuned. It should be easy to come up with, as traditional shortbread already turns out better with a fine grain rice flour (in my opinion).

A gluten free chocolate cake I made for a friend's son who is on a gluten free diet. I made Sponge Bob from Fondant that i coloured. The frosting is not vegan - it's butter cream. Generally, I like to use salted butter with these frostings, as I'm a big fan of adding unexpected salt to baked goods. For kids though, I'd go more lightly on the salt. They want the sugar.