You’ve made the meat, the vegetable, the potatoes, but it seems something is still missing from the meal you are serving. You are running low on ingredients and energy. How about if you look for a simple muffin recipe to round out your meal? Now may not be the time to dive into a complicated baking project, but a simple muffin recipe might perfectly complete your menu.

Typically, if you have flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, milk, vanilla, an egg or two, vegetable oil, and some butter on hand, you can whip up some muffins to complement dinner. They won’t make an overpowering statement, but will simply accompany the meal.

When mixing your muffin batter, don’t work too hard. Muffin batter performs better if it is not over-mixed anyway. Only stir until the ingredients are moistened, otherwise you may have dry, tough, strangely shaped muffins.

Based on the mention of the ingredients list earlier, you can gather that baking muffins from scratch is an expensive endeavor. In fact, typically, making anything from your own foods in your own kitchen will beat purchasing prepackaged items at the store in terms of expense.

Once you have a basic “go-to” simple muffin recipe, you can always add to spruce them up. Add a streusel topping, add chocolate chips, add blueberries, add strawberries, add pomegranate seeds, add cinnamon and raisins, or anything else that sounds yummy to you and that you have in your kitchen.

Further, once you have a basic recipe that you like, you may also want to make substitutions based on nutritional values or allergy issues. It is a simple process to change out the eggs for applesauce. And, instead of cow’s milk, rice milk would be just fine. Adding wheat germ or flax seed can go somewhat unnoticed and give the added nutrition that you seek. Switching to whole-wheat flour could be an option too.

If you take the time to bake your own snacks and breakfast items, you will spend less money on cereal, granola bars, and just pre-packaged snacks in general. The key is to purchase and keep baking staples in your home, and to practice enough that you have recipes you can count on and that you love.