I found this contest at the perfect time. I'm back on the health bandwagon, trying to workout regularly and be smart about my eating. So making these recipes is the perfect way to have some healthy snacks around so I can stay on track.
Today I made their Berry-Lemon Muffins. They were appealing because I still had berries and skim milk from making the smoothie, and I happened to have a bag of whole wheat flour that I've been looking to use. They were simple, quick, and turned out to be delicious!
Here's their recipe:
Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
Zest of one large lemon
1 egg, beaten
3/4 cup fat-free (skim) milk
1/3 cup canola oil
1 cup berries (blueberries, raspberries or combination)
Method
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly oil standard 12-cup muffin tin.
- Mix together dry ingredients and lemon zest in a medium bowl. In another small bowl, combine egg, milk and oil. Add liquid ingredients to dry and stir until just combined. Do not overmix. The batter should be lumpy, thick and moist, not smooth. Carefully fold in berries.
- Fill muffin tins 2/3 full.
- Bake 20-30 minutes or until browned.
I made a couple of minor changes, but nothing that made them less healthy or really changed the taste. First of all, I used vegetable oil instead of canola, because that's what I had on hand. If you compare the nutrition facts on vegetable and canola oils, they're virtually the same, so you should be good as long as you don't use lard.
Also, I added in the juice of half of the lemon that I zested. The zest just didn't seem like enough lemon to me, and the juice gave it a bright taste and made them perfectly moist.
A tip on the recipe page was, "If you like them sweeter, try sprinkling each one with a pinch of brown sugar, which will add to the flavor and produce a beautiful crunchy golden top to enjoy." I did just that, and I have no regrets. A bit of brown sugar to crunch into made them perfect!
Spa Cuisine courtesy of the spa cuisine collection found at Green Mountain at Fox Run Weight Loss and Health Spa for Women, Vermont and SpaIndex.com: Guide to Spas.
They look awesome Torrey, the texture looks great! What berries did you use?
ReplyDeleteThanks! I just thawed a cup of the frozen mixed kind - strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. I chopped the blackberries and strawberries up so they weren't huge.
DeleteI would love to make these in the summer when the berries are ripe! Looks like a good recipe to use as an excuse to go to the farmers' market!
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely! Biting into one... warm... full of fresh raspberries?? Mmm.
DeleteWhat the heck is the zest of a lemon? (Guess who doesn't cook much.)
ReplyDeleteDebbie
I couldn't come up with a decent answer, so according to wikipedia:
Delete"Zest is a food ingredient that is prepared by scraping or cutting from the outer, colorful skin of citrus fruits such as lemon, orange, citron, and lime. Zest is used to add flavor ("zest") to foods. For culinary use, a zester, grater, vegetable peeler, paring knife, or even a surform tool is used to scrape or cut zest from the fruit.
The white portion of the peel under the zest (pith, albedo or mesocarp) is unpleasantly bitter and generally avoided by limiting the peeling depth."
So basically, it's the yellow part of the lemon peel, scraped off. lol