Honey Whole Wheat Fig Muffins

All these ingredients, together, make a world of sense to me. Iced with cream cheese frosting makes it all the more exciting.

I think I still have to experiment with the recipe a little because it was just barely too moist. Perhaps less buttermilk.

Because I made an enormous amount of batter I also tried to make loaf cake with this batter but they didn't set quite right and so I sliced the loaf up (biscotti style) and re-baked them just slightly to make breakfast bar type things and I really like them in that form. They're still soft and chewy but the honey has sort of caramelized around the outside. Quite nice with morning coffee.

Apple, Zucchini, Banana Low Fat Sugar Free Muffins

Did you know that I like to make low fat muffins?  It's true.  I do.  

Once again, trying to scrape out the leftover ingredients from the fridge.  Aren't you proud of me?  I haven't been to the groceries in 3 days!  That's rare.  

These muffins seems like they belong in the Fall.  Some pumpkin would have been nice.

I think these were a success based on my family finishing the whole batch by 6 pm.  I might even say that these are my most successful batch of low fat sugar-free muffins to date.  

Low fat sugar free muffins are tricky to bake.  They take forever because you have to replace the moisture that oil and butter would typically give with ingredients like apples or bananas which will slowly melt, lending moisture as they bake.  The problem is that the longer they bake the more liquid-y the alternative moisture becomes and so they don't firm up the way a typical muffin might.  The way to get around this is to bake for a long time until some sort of baking threshold is reached and the fruit begins to dry out.  Low fat muffins probably take about 45 minutes to bake.  These took about a hour.  

The key in this recipe was the diced apples.  It's important that the apples are sizable cubed rather than crushed.  It's just nice to bite into a nice chunk of apple.  The same goes for the mashed bananas.  Sizable.  

Ingredients

2 bananas

1 3/4 cup finely grated zucchini

1 apple, diced

1 cup craisins (or raisins)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

1/4 cup plain yogurt

1/4 cup egg beaters or 1 egg

1/2 cup splenda

1/2 brown sugar substitute (or just another 1/2 cup of splenda)

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour

1 heaping cup of whole wheat flour

(optional: 1 cup chopped walnuts or chocolate chips)

1. preheat oven to 350

2. combine the two types of flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and set aside

3. in a large mixing bowl combine egg beaters, apple sauce, yogurt, vanilla extract and sugars

4. gently fold in about 1/2 of the flour mixture into the egg/yogurt/applesauce mixture and set aside

5. in a large bowl mash the bananas roughly and then add the diced apples

6. add the cinnamon and nutmeg to the apple banana mixture

7. add the apple/banana mixture, grated zucchini, and craisins into the remaining 1/2 of the flour mixture until well coated.  you can also add the walnuts and/or chocolate chips at this point

8. fold in the apple/banana/zucchini/craisin mixture into the egg/applesauce/yogurt/flour mixture

9. either line 15 muffin tins or spray them with baking spray (I tend to think low fat muffins do better with baking spray because the liners tend to stick to the muffins since there are no oils)

10. place a heaping ice cream scoop of batter into each muffin tin

11. bake for about 45 minutes to a hour

12. let sit for about 10 minutes and then unmold from muffin tins

Apparently I Am The Muffin Man

Dr. Murray's mother is visiting us from San Francisco.  I'm supposed to call her "Gaga"...I don't think I can do this.  I will just call her Dr. Murray's mother.  Well, Dr. Murray's mother is a wonderfully sweet lady.  Recently she's had a few health problems and now she cannot eat things with high fat content.  Very unfortunate.  

For her arrival I made some low-fat sugar free muffins.  And when I say "some", what I mean is  a ton.  I think I made nearly 50 muffins, which is ridiculous and I don't even know why I did that.  Clearly an 88 pound elderly woman is not going to eat 50 muffins.  

I think low fat sugar free muffins are exciting.  It's like a competition with myself to see how much fat I can remove from a muffins while maintaining moisture and taste.  

I made a chocolate banana muffin, which I was actually pretty pleased with, except I didn't fill up the muffin tins enough and they sort of ended up being mini muffins.

I also made blueberry oatmeal muffins.  I've made these before.  Here is the recipe. 

This is the recipe for the Low Fat Sugar Free Chocolate Banana Muffins (approx. 75 calories per muffin):

Ingredients:

7 ounces sugar free chocolate

1/2 cup applesauce, unsweetened

1/2 cup plain non fat yogurt

3 bananas

1 cup splenda

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

1 1/2 cups flour

1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3/4 cup egg beaters 

1. preheat oven to 350

2. in a double broiler melt the chocolate and then add 1/4 cup of applesauce to the melted chocolate and whisk 

3. peel the bananas and sprinkle them with the cinnamon and smash, not too finely because you want there to be chunks of banana in the muffins

4. in a medium mixing bowl combine the egg beaters, remaining applesauce, and yogurt

5. in a separate bowl sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder

6. make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the yogurt applesauce mixture, blend until just combined

7. fold in the melted chocolate

8. gently fold in the smashed bananas

9. fill up approximately 12 lined muffin tins with the batter (about 3/4 full)

10. let bake for about 15 minuted and then insert a banana chip into the center of each muffin

11. continue to bake for another 10 to 15 minutes 

note* low fat muffins take longer to bake and so the common clean toothpick method is actually not a reliable method of determining whether your muffin is done.  You may have to sacrifice a muffin and split one open to verify that it is completely cooked through.