The Beauty of Chia

For a while I was on a quest to incorporate chia seeds into everything. Sure you can just grab a spoonful and quickly down it with a glass of water before it expands to 9 times its original size in your mouth. Or you can throw some into your yogurt and fruit in the morning. But those things are too obvious—no adventure in that.

The problem is that the chia baking experiments have had as many disasters as successes. Actually probably more disasters as I tried to figure out the ratio and the textures. The chia brownies I tried were just plain weird…like brownie jello jigglers. Seriously.
Every once and awhile, there’s the recipe that makes you think it was worth all of the effort, like Blueberry Bran Muffins…with chia. Oh happiness indeed. My office often orders meals if we have early meetings or lunch meetings. Whenever they picked up brekkie at My Favorite Muffin, there was always a berry bran muffin in there for me. It didn’t feel all that healthy though. I’m thinking that when the oil drips off the muffin when you take a bite, there’s probably a bit of it in there. This experiment was an attempt to come up with a less greasy version. Should muffins really be considered “greasy?”


Bran. What can I say about bran? Truthfully, I think it has gotten a bad rap. A bowl of oat bran for brekkie is about 10 times better than a bowl of oatmeal. It’s all the scrumptiousness of oatmeal without that oatmeal slime. Healthy and tasty--what could be better?
 
Throw in some other whole grain flours and seeds, and this muffin was definitely grainy. It was perfectly moist and fabulous coming out of the oven. Here’s the secret of chia though. While most baked goods get drier as time goes on, chia in baked goods causes them to get increasingly mushier. You don’t want to leave these laying around for more than a day.
 

Blueberry Bran Muffins

1 cup oat bran
1 cup wheat bran
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 Tbsp baking soda
2 TBSP ground flax seed
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
2 cups buttermilk
¾ cup chia gel (3/4 cup water with 1 tbsp ground chia seeds—stir and let sit for 15 minutes)
2 eggs
1 pint blueberries washed and tossed in flour to coat.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees and line muffin tins with paper liners.
Combine all dry ingredients and whisk.
Combine wet ingredients and whisk.
Add wet ingredients and mix until just combined, taking care to not over mix.
Spoon into liners filling to about ¾ full.
Bake for 15 minutes or until tester inserted into muffin comes out clean.
Remove from oven and cool slightly.


My coworker has even joined the chia bandwagon. She whipped up this genius salad dressing and passed on the recipe. Chia is magic.  Truly.
 

½ cup chia gel (1/2 cup water with 2 tsps of chia seed. Stir and let sit 15 minutes)

Add ¼ cup olive oil, 1 tsp lime juice and 1/3-1/2 cup vinegar (to taste) along with 1-2 minced garlic cloves.
Add 1 tsp mustard and about a teaspoon of dried herbs…I used tarragon and basil.

Then you just go crazy with the immersion blender. Dressing keeps for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator.