Blueberry Muffins

So I made these horrendous mexican chocolate snickerdoodle cookies a while back. I say horrendous because I tried to make them healthy. That's right, I broke the cardinal rule of baking: I attempted to alter a recipe that I had never used to begin with. And what's worse is that I attempted to make them healthy by substituting applesauce for the oil in the recipe. The oil -- that's why I thought I could get away with it. Of course you can't substitute applesauce for butter, but surely if a recipe calls for oil, then using applesauce is totally legit, right?

Fail.

However, the experience got me thinking -- these cookies came out all nasty and cake-y and weird. However, if you have something that's already meant to be cake-y, then applesauce could work as a substitute, virtually eliminating the fat from the recipe, right? Then, I realized I had been going about this all wrong. Let cookies have their fat -- they need it. But what doesn't need a lot of fat?

Blueberry Muffins.

I started with a basic recipe for blueberry muffins with a crumb topping. I still want to tweak some things. In particular, the muffins I made also contain raspberries simply because I had some extra laying around. The raspberries were tasty, but they didn't do too much for the structural integrity of the muffin, that's for certain. In terms of fat, there is still an egg yolk in the recipe, but I eliminated the oil, replacing it, quite successfully I might add, with a mixture of applesauce and nonfat greek yogurt (my new kitchen baking staple). The results were a firm muffin with a coarse crumb -- just how I like them. Like I said, I still need to do some tweaking, but this is a great place to start. I should note too that I may be on a muffin kick soon - they're one of my favorite foods, and I've never been 100% happy with how they turn out... at least up to this point.

Healthier Option: Blueberry Muffins

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder

1/4 cup applesauce
1/4 cup nonfat greek yogurt
1 egg
zest of 1 lemon
1/3 cup milk

1 cup fresh blueberries

Crumb Topping
1/2 cup sugar (a mix of white and brown is delightful)
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp butter, cubed

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Prepare a muffin tin either by greasing and flouring the muffin cups or by using paper liners.

In a bowl, whisk all of the dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl combine the applesauce, yogurt, egg,lemon zest, and milk. Pour the wet ingredients on top of the dry ingredients and stir or whisk together, just until combined. Avoid overmixing the batter -- I count to 10 and then stop. Gently fold in the blueberries.

Prepare the crumb topping: mix the sugar, flour, and cinnamon together. Cut in the butter until crumbs form.*

Fill the muffin cups to the top with batter and top with crumb topping. Bake at 375 for about 25 minutes. Start checking after 20, just to be safe but the muffins should be brown and puffed up. Rotating the pan may be necessary halfway through cooking if your oven heats unevenly. For me, this yielded 8 muffins in a 1/2-cup capacity muffin tin.



*I didn't substitute or alter the crumb topping in order to make it healthier. I did however, only use about half of the crumb topping for all of the muffins. Of course, you could simply eliminate it altogether.