Low(er) Fat Lemon-Raspberry Muffins
Print This Recipe
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m watching what I eat (I’ve lost 4 pounds thus far, yay!) and am always looking for good low(er) fat and low(er) calorie recipes that don’t have weird ingredients in them. Fortunately, I stumbled upon this recipe.
The muffins are moist, flavorful, filled with fruit, and only four points each! (Update: These got a thumbs down the next day from my family. Oh well.) Also, I found it interesting that the recipe calls for grinding the sugar (or in my case, Splenda blend) with the lemon zest. I think I may try that next time I make sugar cookies.
Ingredients
1 lemon
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup nonfat buttermilk (I could only find low-fat)
1/3 cup canola oil
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup white whole-wheat flour or whole-wheat pastry flour (see Shopping Tip)
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen (not thawed) raspberries
Preparation
- Preheat oven to 400°F. Coat 12 large (1/2-cup) muffin cups with cooking spray or line with paper liners.
- Zest one lemon. (If you don’t have a Microplane zester, treat yourself to one!) Combine the zest and sugar in a food processor; pulse until the zest is very finely chopped into the sugar. Add buttermilk, oil, egg and vanilla and pulse until blended.
- Combine whole-wheat flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Add the buttermilk mixture and fold until almost blended. Gently fold in raspberries. Divide the batter among the muffin cups.
- Bake the muffins until the edges and tops are golden, 20 to 25 minutes. (Mine took about 18 minutes.) Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack. Serve warm.
Recipe from Eating Well.
- – -
In blog news, you can now receive email updates of new blog posts!
Whoopie Pies*
Print This Recipe
It’s official, I’m back to counting points (if you don’t know points are, consider yourself lucky). But have no fear, I will still be making yummy treats, I just won’t be eating any as many of them, and I hope to find some tasty lower fat/calorie recipes as well. Speaking of lower fat, I first saw this recipe about six years ago when I did WW for the first time, but wasn’t as into baking back then so I never tried it. Fortunately, the recipe was just a Google search away.
These cookies were simple to make, quite good, and have a nice mild chocolate flavor (and not at all bad for two points!). And while marshmallow fluff adds a little bit of sweetness, it also caused a whole lot of problems. First, I was using my small cookie scoop to scoop the fluff on the cookies when the scoop broke. The spring popped out, it made a horrible noise, and it ended up in a few pieces. Who knew fluff was so sticky and stiff? Secondly, after adding the fluff and sandwiching the cookies, they all started to tilt (they aren’t flat after all), causing the fluff to leak out, thus making a huge mess and some ugly looking cookies. (I know WW chose fluff to help keep the fat and calorie count down, but there must be another option that won’t spread and leak. Any suggestions?)
*I understand these are not true Whoopie Pies. They are simply a Weight Watchers version of them. If you have an issue with the name, complain to Weight Watchers, not me. Thanks in advance.
Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
1 egg white
1/2 cup 1% low-fat milk (I used buttermilk because that’s all I had in the house)
3/4 cup marshmallow cream
Preparation
- Preheat oven to 425°F.
- Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt in a small bowl.
- With an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the sugar, shortening and egg white in a medium bowl until fluffy and well blended (about 2 minutes).
- Stir in the flour mixture, then add the milk until just blended.
- Drop the dough (it will be a cross between cake batter and cookie dough in consistency) by spoonfuls onto large, ungreased baking sheets (I used Silpats), making 36 cookies.
- Bake until top springs back when lightly touched (5-7 minutes).
- Cool completely on the sheets on a rack.
- Spoon 2 tsp. marshmallow fluff and spread on the bottoms of half of the cookies.
- Top with remaining cookies.
Yields 18 cookies (I got 15). Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
Low Fat Chocolate Chunk Muffins
Print This Recipe
Usually when you hear the words low fat you think of bland, dry, or flavorless baked goods. I’m happy to report that is not the case with these muffins. These are moist, chocolately, and flavorful! And as an added bonus, they are easy to make and don’t even require a mixer.
Photos of the process here.
Since it’s Mother’s Day weekend and I’m down in San Diego at my parents’ house, I wanted to make these for my mom. After going through her cupboards, I realized she doesn’t have a mini muffin tin so I decided to double the recipe and make a dozen regular size muffins rather than 18 mini muffins. (From my experience, three minis usually equal one regular size muffin.) I also used whole wheat baking flour instead of all-purpose flour and Splenda instead of sugar. You can’t even tell I made any substitutions.
Ingredients
1 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar or 1/2 cup sugar if you like your muffins sweeter
2 Tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup light sour cream
scant 1/2 cup 2% milk
1 Tablespoon canola oil
1 egg white
3.5 ounces chopped dark chocolate
Preparation
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and position a rack in the center of the oven. Measure all of the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl, and whisk together. In a separate bowl, combine all of the wet ingredients and whisk to combine, trying to get as many lumps as possible out of the sour cream. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients all at once and stir to incorporate. Once mixture in combined, fold in the chocolate chunks.
Grease a mini muffin pan. Scoop the muffin batter into a tin with a tablespoon measuring spoon, using one tablespoon of batter per muffin cup. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool in the muffin tins for 5 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Recipe from Joy The Baker.
