A Recipe for Fresh, Low-Fat Blueberry Muffins

This morning I noticed we had too many blue­berries in the fridge. So while my husband went out for a run, I opened the windows wide (to cool the apartment), turned on the oven and made some fresh breakfast food.

fresh muffins, Sunday morning

It had been two decades or so since I’d baked any­thing like these. My rec­ol­lection, mainly from my sub­urban childhood, was that muffins involved a fair amount of work; we used to pull out a mix-​​master with beaters, a flour-​​sifter, and all sorts of stuff that then had to be cleaned. That was far too much work for me this morning.

So I sim­plified and halved an old recipe I’d hand-​​written sometime back in my Moosewood years. And I adjusted it so there’d be less sugar, and swapped whole milk for skim.

Prepa­ration time: 8 — 15 minutes, depending on your pro­fi­ciency in the kitchen; Baking time: 30 minutes

Ingre­dients (for 8 small muffins):

¹⁄₄ cup softened butter (veg­etable oil is OK, too; some people say that improves the texture and taste of the baked goods, but I’m not con­vinced and try to min­imize chem­icals in my cooking.)

²⁄₃ cup sugar

1 large beaten egg

¹⁄₄ cup skim milk

¹⁄₄ tea­spoon salt

1 tea­spoon baking powder

1 cup flour (I used organic, which I hap­pened to have, and didn’t bother sifting it)

optional: cin­namon, ~ ¹⁄₄ teaspoon

ripe blue­berries, about 2 cups, washed

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Prepa­ration:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees (F)

2. Use a fork to smash the butter at the base of a deep, medium-​​sized bowl;

3. Add the beaten egg and mush every­thing together;

4. Add in the sugar, stir with a fork or large spoon;

5. Add the milk, swirl every­thing together with the spoon;

6. Add the salt and baking powder, mix thor­oughly at this point to evenly dis­tribute the salt and powder;

7. Add the flour, and mix again.

(This step com­pletes a basic muffin batter.)

8. Now, add the fruit.* For blue­berries: With extra-​​clean hands, grab a fistful of washed blue­berries and squeeze them into the batter for fla­voring. Then add in the remaining whole berries and mix those around, gently.

9. Insert paper cupcake holders into the holes of an oven-​​proof muffin tray. Drop about ¹⁄₃ cup of batter into each cup, not overfilling.

10. Bake for 30 minutes at 375 degrees in the center of the oven.

11. Remove from the oven. (If you’re com­pulsive, as I am: insert and withdraw a toothpick with a quick in-​​out stroke; if the muffins are cooked, raw batter won’t stick. If batter does stick to the toothpick, put the muffins back in the oven for 5 minutes or longer, until they’re done.)

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If you follow these instruc­tions, you can make fresh muffins with minimal equipment and little to clean up. You can freeze and store the muffins, no problem, once they’ve cooled.

*There are countless fruit vari­a­tions and other add-​​ins you might use. This morning I pre­pared half of the batter using a ripe, diced banana and a fistful of cut-​​up walnuts.

Con­sid­er­a­tions:

Not every­thing I cook is nutri­tious. And while I don’t advise eating muffins reg­u­larly, as these are essen­tially con­fec­tions, I figure if you’re going to serve these to your family, it’s better that they be pre­pared with fresh ingre­dients and a minimum of chem­icals, sugar, salt and fats. These have some rel­ative advan­tages over similar breakfast treats:

These lack preservatives;

They’re roughly half the size of typical store-​​bought muffins (coun­tering the super-​​sized effect);

They’re made with skim milk instead of whole milk;

They have approx­i­mately ²⁄₃ the usual amount of sugar.

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Besides, they came out great!

Of course, dear readers, I’d like to know what are the true nutri­tional ben­efits in blue­berries, and what happens to their putative anti-​​oxidant prop­erties once they’ve been baked for ¹⁄₂ an hour. But I don’t think anyone knows, for sure.

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Related Posts:

• Lunch with Yogurt, Honey, Crumbled Cereal and Cut Fruit