Recipe for Ground Elder Muffins (30 min)
Baking time
20 minutes
(+ 10m prep + foraging time)
Serves
6-8 muffins
Snack
Season
Spring
Summer
Most people consider ground elder a pesky invasive weed. Not us guinea pig parents! Instead of battling ground elder, you can just eat it! Forage ground elder for yourself and your guinea pigs or bunnies. These ground elder muffins have a delicious hearty taste to them.
Ingredients
- 75g ground elder plants (leaves) (2.6 oz)
- 25g organic honey (0.9 oz)
- 2 ripe bananas
- 1 egg
- 1 package vanilla sugar
- cream of tartar baking powder (or replace with x g regular baking powder)
- buckwheat flour
- cooking chocolate
- oil of your choice (I used sunflower & olive mix)
- raspberries for topping – optional
You will need a immersion blender and a kitchen blender!
Foraging ground elder
For this recipe, you’ll need a bag of fresh ground elder. This plant is also known as Herb Gerrard, Bishops Weed, Masterwort or Goutweed. It’s easily recognizable by its 7 leaves and typical smell which resembles parsley. Young leaves are light green and a bit shiny. Older leaves are a bit darker. You can eat the flowers too, however the plant is best eaten before flowering.
You don’t need gloves to forage ground elder. The plant is popular with snails and moths, so check the bottom of the leaves before you pull it out. Your plant might be occupied!
How to make it
Chop and mix bananas, egg, honey and sugar
Use a hand blender
Mix for 2 minutes until frothy
Remove stems from the ground elder leaves
75g including the stems, so you will be left with a bit less.
Chop leaves
Cutting them smaller will decrease blending time
Add chopped leaves and frothy mix to a blender
Blend to a batter
This can take a while, because leaves are sturdy! Trust the process and keep at it.
Add baking powder and flour
Mix these in with a handmixer or by hand
Mix until batter becames doughy and thick
Grind the chocolate and mix it into the batter
Butter a muffin shape and divide batter
The muffins won’t rise very high, so don’t worry about overfilling
Bake for 15-20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius
That’s 360 degrees Fahrenheit.
To add more sweetness as a topping, you can add a few raspberries on top. And there you go! Semi-healthy (let’s be honest) ground elder muffins with minimal added sugar, foraged by your very own hands.
Don’t forget to feed your guinea pigs the leftover stems and ground elder!
