Light Chocolate Chip Muffins

Ahem, so I know I said I would be posting some healthier baking recipes but ummm, the thing is ... that I've been too busy making full butter, full sugar, full chocolate recipes to fit in any healthy baking. *sigh* I'm just one of those people who would much rather have a small piece of something decadent and thoroughly bad for me (though I hardly ever stop at one piece), than a huge chunk of something healthier but not as tasty! But I know I'm going to have to readjust my attitude a bit and there are some advantages to healthier baking. For example, whereas I try to have the naughty stuff I bake only on weekends, I could have one of these muffins every day during the week without feeling guilty and still enjoying some sort of treat. 

So I'll bake more healthy stuff more often. I promise. Or I'll at least try really hard!

These muffins from Weight Watchers "Seriously Satisfying" cook book are pretty good. Apart from the low fat margarine and skimmed milk, everything else is normal, full fat stuff. And like most muffins, they're very easy to put together, so give 'em a go. I'm glad I did.

ProPoints value per recipe: 46
ProPoints per muffin: 4
Makes 12


Ingredients
200g plain flour
2 tsps baking powder
75g caster sugar
a pinch of salt
1 egg, beaten
200ml skimmed milk
25g low fat spread, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or 1 vanilla pod
40g dark chocolate chips
40g white chocolate chips


1 - Preheat oven to Gas Mark 6/200C/fan oven 180C
2 - Line the muffin tin with the muffin cases
3 - Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl and stir in the sugar and salt
4 - In a separate bowl, beat together the egg, milk, low fat spread and vanilla

5 - Add the egg mixture to the flour with the chocolate chips and stir together until just combined. As with all muffins do not over stir; it is better to have a slightly lumpy texture
6 - Spoon into the muffin cases and bake for 15-20 minutes until golden and risen

7 Cool on a wire rack

Happy (and Healthy) New Year - Apple and Sunflower Seed Muffins

I'm not usually one for following the crowd. But this new year, I'm jumping on probably the biggest bandwagon there is. You know, that one that comes round once a year (maybe twice if you count pre-summer), right at the beginning of the year, straight on the heels of Christmas excesses. Yup, that's right, I am going on a diet! I have Christmas and two weeks in Lagos straight after, gorging on all the foods I love, to blame. 


My diet of choice is Weight Watchers, which I'm constantly touting as the best diet around. There's no self deprivation, or cutting out entire food groups. Instead, with a daily point value, it just teaches you how to make healthier food choices so you can get the most for your points. Don't worry, though, this does not mean I'm going to stop baking all the other fattening stuff! Thanks to the new WW ProPoints system, I have an extra allowance each week, which I'll spend some having a slice or portion of the stuff I bake! However, I'll also be experimenting with healthier recipes so bear with me my anti-diet readers, there will be plenty for you too!


First up are these muffins. I can't lie, these do taste like diet muffins but they're tasty, filling make a good and healthy substitute for a muffin breakfast or in place of your afternoon cake. I believe that there are low-fat muffin recipes out there that are tastier than this, but these were a good start. 


5 WW ProPoints per muffin
Makes 8


Ingredients


3 eggs
100ml skimmed milk
7 tsp artificial granulated sweetener
150g apples, grated
100g carrots, grated
2 tbsp sunflower oil
30g sultanas
10g sunflower seeds
300g plain flower
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of salt


For the icing
1 - 2 tbsp lemon juice
40g icing sugar


1 - Preheat oven to Gas Mark 4/180°C/fan oven 160°C. 
2 - Line two muffin tins with 8 muffin cake cases
3 - Whisk together the eggs, milk, sweetener, apples, carrots, sunflower oil, sultanas and sunflower seeds

4 - In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, mixed spice, ground cinnamon and pinch of salt

5 - Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined

6 - Spoon into the muffin cases and bake for 30 - 35 minutes. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack

7 - Mix the icing sugar with the lemon juice and drizzle over the muffins.

These are best eaten on the day they're made or the can be frozen. Defrost and warm through in a microwave (medium power) before eating.

Banana Wholemeal Muffins

I have an embarrassing confession - I can't bake muffins and cookies. And I know you're all thinking what all good muffin bakers say to me; 'Muffins are the easiest thing to make, you just put all the ingredients together and don't over stir!'. Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all before and I personally think that is all just a ginormous conspiracy to make me realise how inadequate a baker I am! Okay, so in actual fact I've only attempted muffins once before now so perhaps I judged myself to hastily. But I can make three-layer cakes dammit! I can't believe I was stumped by a silly orange muffin! (In case you're wondering what was wrong with it, it tasted good but was hard as a rock cake!). And I've only made cookies once too,  a very long time ago, and I can't even remember how bad they were but I'm going to go with very bad if I blocked it out of my memory - forgetting food is not something I do often!

On a related aside, when I worked at Penguin, there was this thing called a pulp shelf - basically, all Penguin books that weren't sold in book stores are returned to the publisher and it was cheaper to get rid of (pulp) them than it was to take them back to the warehouse and sort them out so our pulp shelves were stocked every day and we were allowed to take 2 books a day. That was probably the best perk of the job for a bookaholic like me! However, all the books usually went within 10 minutes of the shelves being stocked so luck played a part too. My friend Ben saw and took this book 'Muffin Bible' before I did but after some shameless begging, he let me have it on the condition that I bake them all muffins from the book - bet he regretted that when I brought in my chocolate orange rock cakes muffins! It's an amazing book with lots of different recipes that all look great! Now that I've made my first successful batch of muffins, I might give some of the others a go.

Say hello to my 'You're not a failure' muffins! I liked to think they are pretty healthy as they don't have much sugar (and what they do contain is brown) and they use wholemeal flour so I had them for breakfast for a week! They're not too sweet and were soft and fluffy, just like other people's muffins are! Yay me! And perhaps all those bakers are right, they were very easy to make ;p

Ingredients

2 ripe banana
1 egg
75g butter, melted
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup hot milk
1 1/2 cups wholemeal flour
2tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sultanas

1 - Mash bananas and add egg, butter and baking soda dissolved in milk
2 - Add remaining ingredients and mix until just combined
3 - Three-quarters fill well-greased muffin pans and bake at 200ºC for 15-20 minutes.