Raspberry Muffins

I usually don’t have muffins that often because I’ve found that many muffins that you can buy are kind of like cupcakes, but without frosting.  To me, it seems like there should be some difference between muffins and cupcakes, and really if I am going to have a cupcake, I’d much rather have it with the frosting.  In my opinion, muffins should be healthy enough that you can eat them with breakfast and not feel guilty and sugar loaded for the rest of the morning.  After glancing through the Super Natural Every Day cookbook, I think Heidi Swanson shares this same sentiment, and I was excited to give one of her muffin recipes a try. However, I ended up having to make some major changes to the recipes because I was missing some important ingredients.

Millet was supposed to be the star ingredient in these muffins.  Apparently when you add raw millet to muffin batter the resulting muffins will have an interesting texture and a nice crunch.  When I set out to make these muffins, I was almost positive that I had some millet among the dry grains and beans in my cabinets.  But upon closer inspection, the millet turned out to be amaranth—another nutrient rich whole grain, but one that needs to be fully cooked before it can be consumed.  For a minute I thought I’d cook up a batch of amaranth and add it to the batter, but that seemed like too much work and I wasn’t sure what it would do to the consistency of the muffins.  I also found that I didn’t have any honey, which was the sweetener called for in the recipe.  I fretted a bit about these missing ingredients, but since I had most of the other ingredients and some fresh raspberries I wanted to add to the original recipe, I decided to go ahead and make the muffins, Sally-style!

The resulting muffins were light and fluffy and not too sweet, and the flavor kind of reminded me of a pancake. I did replace some of the honey with maple syrup, and they may have tasted even more like pancakes if I had replaced all of the honey with the maple syrup (I replaced the other half with brown rice syrup).  The real star ingredient ended up being the raspberries though. Their sweet-tart flavor really stood out in almost every bite.  Eventually I’ll probably make the recipe as intended, but these little muffins really hit the spot.

Raspberry Mini Muffins

Adapted from Super Natural Every Day

• 1½ cups white whole wheat flour
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup fat free plain yogurt
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 10 tablespoons butter, barely melted
• ¼ cup maple syrup
• ¼ cup brown rice syrup
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 6 oz (roughly a cup) raspberries, cut in half

Preheat the oven to 400°.  Line a mini-muffin tin with muffin cups or grease with butter.  In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  In a large bowl, mix together the yogurt, eggs, melted butter, maple syrup, brown rice syrup, and vanilla.  Slowly add the flour mixture into the yogurt mixture and mix until just incorporated.  Carefully fold the raspberries into the batter.

Fill the cups in the muffin tin until the batter is just below the rim.  Bake for 11 minutes or until the tops of the muffins are beginning to turn golden and just starting to crack (bake for roughly 15 minutes, if using a muffin tin with larger cups). 

Tasty Easy Healthy Green Recipe Ratings: