What's on hand?

Like most people, I can be pretty lazy. Unless I absolutely HAVE to bake something specific, if I don't have the ingredients for a recipe I'll make something else! That's what happened this week.

It started off with me trying to find a recipe that used buttermilk (since we bought a large carton of it) and I found a relatively simple muffin recipe, and I love muffins, so win-win. But I wasn't excited about baking them. So I surfed the web, trying to find something that caught my eye and that's when I saw homemade pop tarts. I'm not a big fan of pop tarts, but I thought it would be something people hadn't seen before. So tonight, I started getting all my ingredients out, thrilled to try out this recipe when I realized... I had no eggs.

I know I don't live far from the grocery store, eggs aren't that expensive, and I'm bound to need eggs in the near future - but I figure future me could deal with that problem! So I decided to just go with Plan A and made muffins! (Now, I do admit, the recipe called for an egg as well, but I was more comfortable replacing the egg in this recipe with just egg whites since it wasn't playing that big of a 'binding' role) Now that I've made them, I'm pretty excited! I love trying to make delicious, healthier muffins since they usually get a bad rap. Now, that's not to say these taste like those muffins! They do have a different texture and aren't nearly as sweet, but the explosion of berry inside is wonderful!

Here is the recipe:

Healthy Berry Muffins
Adapted from Health Nut Blueberry Muffin from allrecipes.com
Makes approximately 12 big muffins and 3 muffin tops

3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup oat bran
1/3 cup rolled oats
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 cup frozen berries
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 cup buttermilk
Equivalent of 1 whole egg in egg whites
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 12 cup muffin pan, or line with paper muffin cups which are sprayed with cooking spray.
2. In a large bowl, stir together the all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, sugar, oat bran, quick-cooking oats, baking powder, and baking soda. Gently stir in the blueberries and walnuts. In a separate bowl, mix together the applesauce, buttermilk, egg, oil and vanilla. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and mix just until blended. Spoon into muffin cups, filling all the way to the top.
3. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the tops of the muffins spring back when lightly touched.

As for the alterations I made to the original recipe: I used less sugar and used brown instead of the original granulated sugar - I think brown sugar adds a lot more flavour. I replaced the wheat germ with more oat bran (I didn't have wheat germ) and altered the amount of oat bran to rolled oats. I prefer the texture the oats give the muffins. I also got rid of the salt and walnuts, and used frozen berries instead of blueberries. Lastly, I added the cinnamon and nutmeg, because I felt like otherwise the muffins would lack flavour.

Now I know what all you bakers are thinking, 'Why did she grease her muffin liners? They replace the need for greasing!' Well, after making a lot of lower-fat muffin recipes, I realized the fat plays an important role - it makes things not stick! In the past, whenever I've tried to take low-fat muffins out of the liners, I lost half the muffin to the wrapper! What a waste! So now, whenever there is little or no oil in a recipe, I always grease the paper liners just to make sure they come out!

Overall, this was a simple recipe that I modified based on what I had on hand and the results came out delicious (in my opinion)! As much as baking is an exact science, there is always a little room for substitutions. If you are too lazy to go to the grocery store like me, that's ok! It just means you have the chance to get creative and explore whole new possibilities.