Top of the muffin... TO YOU!!

That's a Seinfeld reference, in case you didn't catch it -- watch some comedic gold here. I'm pretty much known to quote Seinfeld daily, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus is one of my comedienne heroes, so it probably won't be the first time I rope Seinfeld into a cooking post.

We've hit that time of the year in Florida where afternoon storms roll in every day and you get stuck inside for a few hours. Matthew left for his European tour a few days ago, so on days like these, it just ends up being me and Miyuki (our French Bulldog) holding down the fort. I find this to be perfect weather for baking.

I don't have a gluten allergy, but I'm always interested in working with alternative flours. I grew up on plain bleached white flour, and I don't think I ever knew you could bake with anything else until well into my 20s. 

One of my favorite baking cookbooks is La Tartine Gourmande, not only because I really love any variation on tarts and tar tines but because her book has helped me understand varying flours so well. Amaranth, buckwheat, quinoa, brown rice, coconut, hazelnut -- just some of the interesting flours the book introduces you to.

I'm pretty much head over heels for anything with banana and chocolate. Throw some nuts in there, and I'm sold. And who doesn't love a muffin? A food that is socially acceptable as both a dessert and breakfast is a winner all around. These Banana Chocolate Hazelnut muffins are delicious and definitely different than the muffins I grew up on.

The recipe gave you a choice to use walnuts or hazelnuts, and I went with walnuts because they're pretty much my favorite nut.  The recipe also called for three kinds of flour -- hazelnut, quinoa, and buckwheat. I ended up using brown rice flour instead of quinoa flour because I had it in the pantry. They are both medium flours, so I thought the swap would be equivalent. The only thing about these muffins is that they didn't rise as much as I had expected, but perhaps that was the flour swap. Either way, puffy or not, these muffins take the cake! Definitely indulging in them for breakfast tomorrow.