This recipe was entered in Tundra Telegraph's Great Alaskan Recipes contest.

These muffins are a regular at our house. It all started with an attempt to make basic muffins healthier. To be fair, I was never really good at following instructions, so I am always adding and improvising.

First, the recipe makes only 10, and my muffin pan has 12 cups, so that needed to be fixed. I always love using our Alaska sourdough when I bake, and that was the solution; adding starter and extras makes enough batter for my muffin pan.

Our sourdough was a housewarming gift when we got our home in 1997, from a dear friend in Salcha, who also got it as a housewarming gift decades before, from an old-timer there. It has lived with us ever since, even surviving the Boundary Fire of 2004, which wiped out our property. It is the main source of pancakes in our house and finds its way into everything from bread to cakes to muffins. It is fun sometimes making up some sourdough biscuits or dumplings to go with moose and thinking that early miners were eating the same darn thing so long ago.

Next, I wanted more than just white flour, and that is why I threw in the ground flax seed, wheat germ and oatmeal. Now we have some good carbo loading going on. This little article helps explain why sourdough helps make these muffins more nutritious to help fuel us.

Mashed bananas add nutrition and also mean you can use less sugar.

Now having added all this good nutrition, I went with some nice chocolate chips. They're optional if you want to be really really healthy. But I like to think that all the other healthy stuff I add, and the running or mushing I do after eating them, kind of balances out a little chocolate.

Sadly, at Alaska winter temps these muffins will freeze solid, so they are better pre- and post-mushing treats for humans. And they have become my go-to breakfast before running events. Fairbanks has an amazing running community and you can do a running event almost every weekend of the summer season. My favorite is the season ender, the Equinox Marathon, and you can be sure I will be fueling up with one or two of these on race morning.

In a big bowl:
Mash 2-3 very ripe bananas
Add 1 cup sourdough starter (if you don't have sourdough you will have to up the milk to about 3/4 cup)
Add and mix well:
2 tbs. ground flax seed
2 tbs wheat germ
1/3 cup raw sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup soy milk (real milk works too)
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. baking soda (for sourdough)
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup oatmeal
1-2 cups flour, 'til batter is medium thick
Add: chocolate chips to taste; about 1/2 a bag is nice

Spoon into greased muffin pan and bake at 400 F 'til golden brown and done, about 20 minutes.

Jodi Bailey, Chatanika

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