Okay I'm not like a huge baker, but I feel that as a stay-at-home Mom baking is something that I should do...I took a break there for awhile after I had my second baby. I was running short on time and discovered that for $5 a pop from Wal-Mart, instead of making them myself I could get 9 muffins for my husband's lunch. I would take the box, divy it up and put a bunch in ziplocs in the freezer so I could take them out on demand (and also so I wouldn't eat them).
Pure brilliance in my mind...
So here I am feeling all self-congratulatory...until one day I read the nutritional information and realize I have been slowly killing my husband - like 40 g of fat in each muffin (most of it saturated), or almost 50% of your daily fat intake. OMG, I'm killing my husband! So, I figure that its probably time to start baking again.
There are some that will argue that the muffin is an intrinsically unhealthy food and that I shouldn't be putting them in his lunch in the first place...To the naysayers I say "Hey, I can put carrot sticks in his lunch until the cows come home, but he's just going to be hitting the gas-station for a pack of hostess cupcakes every day." Everyone needs a treat in their lunch. Besides, he's going to start thinking "What good is a stay-at-home wife if she is going to pack me a crap lunch everyday?"
So back to my muffins. I figure at least if I am making the muffins at home, I know what I am putting into them. So I went on the quest for the moderately healthy, but still tasty muffin and this is what I came up with.
Pumpkin, Walnut Cranberry Muffins
1 cup white flour
1/4 cup whole wheat
1/2 cup oat bran
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup loosely packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 cup E.D. Smith pumpkin pie filling
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1) Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2) Stir together your dry ingredients
3) Mix together your wet ingredients
4) Add the pumpkin pie filling and cranberries and walnuts to your wet ingredients
5) Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients (mix it together, but don't overstir it)
6) Spoon into muffin liners in a muffin tin and place in oven.
This recipe will make about 10 - 12 muffins and these babies take about 30 - 33 minutes to cook. You can do a toothpick test for doneness, but the edges should spring back when you touch them and they should be a nice golden brown.
I don't know what the nutritional information is on these (I'm sure you could do the whole applesauce for butter substition, egg whits etc. and really get into it). Regardless I feel better about eating these than a muffin from MacDonalds or Tim Hortons, with unknown ingredients that I can't pronounce and added preservatives.
Plus you can feel good about the fact that you're not killing your husband.
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