Dream Muffins

With hope in my heart, I bought another “healthy” (read: low-fat) muffin the other day. Like a girl who keeps going for the wrong guy, I should have known better. It was predictably disappointing—overly sweet and rubbery, with the texture of paper pulp. I tossed it after two bites.

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Sure, I could have gone for the regular muffin, and I do now and then. But let’s face it, those are really just cake in a muffin tin—loaded with butter, sugar, and white flour, and coming in at (gulp!) more than 500 calories each. Not something I consider an everyday food. It seems that there are two kinds of muffins in the world: either delicious and not so healthful, or healthful and not so delicious. But wouldn’t it be great if there were a tender, moist, utterly scrumptious muffin that was also light and chock full of wholesomeness? I have good news for you: With a few simple tweaks to the standard recipe, I was able to make my dream muffin a reality. And what’s even better is that those tweaks can be applied to other baked goods, so you can have your cake and eat it, too.

The secret ingredient

Fruit purées like applesauce or mashed banana (or even vegetable purées made from pumpkin, carrots, and sweet potatoes) make muffins and other baked goods tender and moist while allowing you to reduce the overall fat and sugar in the recipe. Normally it’s fat that helps baked goods stay moist, because it surrounds the starch granules and protects them from gluten development, locking in moisture. But the pectin in fruit and vegetables does essentially the same thing, making it possible to cut back on the fat in a recipe without sacrificing moisture. Fruit purées also provide sweetness, so you can add less sugar to your batter. More...

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