White Whole Wheat Flour (Is that an oxymoron?)

photo credit: jamie h via photopin cc

Since switching to cleaner eating for myself, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to entice my kids to want to eat more whole grains. Now, I know I could just switch everything out cold turkey, but I want them to eat healthier because it actually tastes better.

My kids love asparagus and raw spinach, and won’t eat eggs unless they are from our own chickens – they say the store bought ones “taste like water”. Every week, they beg me to fix some of the salmon and halibut my husband recently brought back from Alaska.

But they are unabashedly carboholics. Particularly stuff with sugar in it.  And they do like their chips. Having grown up in a no-sugar, no-white flour household, and remembering that I snuck sugar whenever I could get it, I didn’t want that for my kids. We do sugar and goldfish and Doritos in moderation. And then they get to Jr. High and don’t you check under their beds because they just might be eating more sugar than you hoped but aren’t bothering to hide the evidence very well, and frankly I just don’t really want to know…

So, recently I got to thinking about the baking I do. With all the options out there, could I substitute alternate flour for the unbleached white flour and get away with it? Off I went to the store and came home with spelt flour, millet flour, and white whole wheat flour, which is whole wheat flour made from white wheat, rather than the usual red. Totally the same nutrition as I understand it.

First I made my High Protein Breakfast Cookies, which, by the way, was probably one of the most popular posts I’ve done on this blog. I’ve made some more tweaking to it, which if I remember, I’ll repost with the new recipe. Not a single bit of white flour in it, and all members of my family declared them the best version they’d ever had.

Feeling like I was on a roll, I thought I’d tackle my Pumpkin Gingerbread Loaves. I love Jenny’s idea about having “tea time” when her kids come home from school. If only mine would go somewhere, I’d be happy to welcome them home with smiles and tea! (Pause for self-pep talk about why I choose to home school my kids when I could be cavorting around doing what I want to do from 8 to 3…)

But I can welcome them in the morning with my newly revised, newly renamed Pumpkin Maple Gingerbread Muffins, conveniently stored in the freezer and easily re-warmed. And yes, not a single grain of processed white flour to be found.

Again, my family loved the taste. And in spite of the fact that the flours had less gluten in them than regular white flour, the muffins rose beautifully, without the heaviness that whole wheat pastry flour can bring.

So, if I was one of those mommas, I’d have fall-themed muffin tin liners, but I’m not.

Without further ado, here you go: (Without those step-by-step pictures smart bloggers take, because I didn’t even think of sharing until it was too late for pictures.)

Pumpkin Maple Gingerbread Muffins
Makes 24 muffins

1 ½ c sugar (1^st revision – I significantly cut the sugar down from the original recipe, and used raw sugar because I like the taste.)
½ cup maple syrup
¾ cup warmed coconut oil (to liquefy it)
4 eggs
1/3 cup water
16 oz canned pumpkin
1 ¼ cup whole spelt flour
1 ¼ cups white whole wheat flour
2 t ginger
1 t each: cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice
1 ½ t salt
2 t baking soda
½ t baking powder

1. Mix sugar, oil and eggs.
2. Beat in pumpkin.
3. Sift flour, spices, salt, and baking powder
4. Add to pumpkin mixture, stirring just until blended.

Bake at 350°
2 loaves – 1 hour
Muffins – 20 minutes

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who wonders if you think she’ll nullify the whole nutritious  thing by serving them tomorrow morning with thick-cut Hemplers bacon. But maybe she doesn’t care. She’s getting bacon!