Saturday, October 9, 2010

The Great Muffin Experiment

Hi Kristine!
I have officially started my quest for the perfect muffin recipe.
Before I go into my thoughts on muffins please watch this video so you
can giggle every time I write 'muffin'




I am now going to refer to every muffin as my muffin in this post.

So I recently realized that I want to eat a muffin for breakfast
everyday.  I don't get up early enough to eat breakfast at home and my
new office doesn't have a kitchen or a toaster.  I also frequently
wake up M-F with a hangover (not something I'm proud of but it does
happen just as often as not, and its not a habit I'm about break-
realistically) and muffins are the perfect cure, plus they go oh so
well with coffee.   So I was buying these delicious yogurt muffins but
they are huge and even though they are made with yogurt- I doubt they
are healthy.  Hence my quest for the perfect muffin recipe that I can
make on Sunday and eat throughout the week.

I want a good base recipe that I can change up every week with new
flavors so I don't get bored.  I also want something hearty enough to
keep me full most of the morning, low carb, low fat and low sugar.  A
lot of demands for 1 little muffin.

To make my muffin low in carbs I am going to experiment with almond
flour/ meal and also Flax flour/meal.  I've heard soy flour is also
good but I am allergic to soy so I'll avoid that. I will also be using
sugar free, low calorie sweeteners.  My favorite is splenda but I
would like to try stevia or truvia, which are natural sugar
substitutes.

I started today with flax meal as my flour replacement, I used this
recipe as a guide:
http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/breads/r/chelsiemuffins.htm
Except I wanted to make my own flavor, not silly cranberry!  I thought
chocolate would be a delicious treat, but so would berries! And all
muffins need nuts! So I ended up leaving out the cranberries,
cinnamon, nutmeg and orange and adding:
-A generous handful of walnuts
-A very generous handful of ghiradelli baking pieces 60% dark chocolate heaven
-4 Tbsp of cocoa powder
-About 6 oz of frozen berry medly (blueberries, strawberries,
blackberries and raspberries) mostly thawed.  I cut the larger berries
into pieces so they would fit into my muffin.

I also used 1/2 cup splenda dissolved in 1/2 cup water

My muffin came out good, but not perfect (My Italian roommate gave it
a thumbs up). Very moist and super chocolatey but it didn't rise at
all.  They came out of the oven in the same shape as I put them in,
kind of lumpy and not rounded on top.  (see the attached pictures)
Apparently this is a thing with flax meal, you need to add more yeast.
 But the recipe didn't call for yeast so how much should I add?  You
are the more experienced baker, do you have any thoughts?  Maybe I
have to use some real flour to use yeast?

So overall the flavor was good, but masked with chocolate.  I would
like to use less eggs and oil, and I want my muffin to rise a little
and have that crunchy muffin top.
I think next week I will try to make lemon poppy muffins with almond
meal and eventually I will create a combination recipe with both flax
and almond meal.

So overall I would not recommend these but it was a good stepping stone on my quest!
Get Full!
Jess

1 comment:

  1. Jess, these look great! I wish I was there to try one. I'll post about my spinach-nutmeg muffin experiment soon. Here's an interesting question: what are the nutrition facts "of your muffin?" Nutrition is a very important criteria and we must investigate! PS- I ate chicken today.

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