Gettin' Creative with Muffins

There was a recipe, Healthy Banana-Blueberry Muffins, in a recent issue of Everyday Food that I have been really wanting to try. I love banana bread, I love muffins and I love blueberries. I also appreciated that this recipe had the word "healthy" in the title, though I know 9.6 grams if fat per muffin I think the term "healthy" is relative to something like a Costco muffin.

I decided to do some tweeking and really loved the outcome.

Here is my version of the Healthy Banana-Blueberry Muffin recipe:

• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 ground flax seed
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup low-fat yogurt (vanilla or plain)
  
• 1/3 cup white sugar
  
• 1/3 cup packed light-brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 3 thawed bananas
• 3 Tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup blueberries (frozen or fresh)
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  

I followed the instructions the as in the EF recipe. I substituted ground flax seed because I didn't have wheat germ, and on a tip from my good friend Kacy, substituted low-fat yogurt for butter. (FYI: I find that using yogurt for butter makes whatever you are baking have a more cake-like consistency, kind of bouncy rather than dense. If you are a texture person this may bug you, but if you are not a texture person then yogurt is a lovely low-fat substitution.)

I use thawed, previously frozen bananas for my banana bread. The reasoning is twofold and has nothing--as far as I know--to do with cooking: One, convenience--overripe bananas on your counter are like a ticking-time bomb, and I can't handle the pressure of needing to make the banana bread before my bananas go truly rotten. And two: it's what my mom does. To my knowledge frozen bananas are no different than just really-ripe once they have been baked.

I tried this recipe without the blueberries and the spices, and with just two bananas, just to experiment. They were a little bland. I added the third banana, and the nutmeg and cinnamon. I halved the remaining batter and added 1/2 cup blueberries. Both the muffins with blueberries and the muffins without blueberries were great. (If you wanted to have blueberries in all of the muffins you would need a cup, that's why the recipe calls for 1 cup.)

In the future--when I don't care about the fat content--I think I will use butter instead of yogurt. I am a texture person, and prefer the more dense muffin that you get when you use butter. I would also decrease the all-purpose flower to 1/2 cup and use 1/2 a cup of the ground flax seed. I like the nutty flavor of the flax and flax is very good for you. (It's high in Omega-3 fatty acids.)

I made a simple syrup from 1 part warm water and 2 parts granulated sugar and brushed it on the tops of the muffins then sprinkled the tops with chopped walnuts before baking. The simple syrup makes the muffin tops crunchy and crispy. Walnuts are just pretty and yummy.

All in all I was very satisfied with my afternoon of experimental baking; I like the recipe and I because I had to test all of the different variations I got to eat four muffins.