Low Fat Banana Muffins

I was tempted to make another batch of brownies today because I found a great recipe but then thought 'anyone who reads this is going to think I have a bit of an obsession with chocolate if I don't put something else in a while'. So I thought about what I had in the house and the two close-to-death bananas came to mind. 

Rather than having a recipe in mind for this one, I went online and found a low fat banana loaf recipe. Since I wasn't keen on slicing it into bits (I always find I give myself far too generous a slice...) I made them into little muffins. 

Ingredients:

2 large bananas

1 teaspoon baking soda

120 ml Total 0% Yogurt (which I LOVE)

60 ml sunflower oil

175 grams brown sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

130 grams plain flour

60 grams wholemeal flour

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

Some honey (optional)

• Pop the oven onto 180 degrees. 
• Begin by mashing the bananas and mixing them with the yogurt. Add the baking soda and leave to do it's magic while you prepare the other items. 
• Mix the oil, sugar, egg and vanilla extract in another bowl. It will turn a gorgeous brown colour and become an oily mass when you can mix around quite soothingly. (Or maybe that's just me...)
• Seive together your flours, the cinnamon and baking powder in another bowl (I apologise in advance for all the washing up you'll have to do afterwards) and create a well in the middle
• Mix the yogurt gloop and the soothing oily gloop together and add slowly to the dry flour mixture. 
• It will look horrid - trust me. Bit of banana creating little pockets of white, but trust me it's fine if it looks like this. 
• Distribute the mixture evenly between 12 muffin cases in a muffin tray. Make sure the one you intend to have is slightly larger than the others. 
• Pop into the oven and let cook away for about 20 minutes. After that, bring them out, poke em with a cocktail stick to make sure they're cooked all the way through and voila!

I drizzled on some honey as soon as I took them out the oven so they were still soft enough for it to seep all the way through the muffin. Definitely a good option I'd say. Another option would be to try the Total Yogurt with honey in it - might add a nice little kick to the recipe.

Oh and don't do the washing up now. Have one while they're still warm with a nice cup of tea then guilt your partner into doing the dishes later. Sorted.

Weight Watchers ProPoints: 5

Calories: 175

Healthy Marmalade Muffins

My second attempt at a fat free baking evening were some marmalade muffins made with wholemeal flour and yogurt instead of butter. I had some concerns about the recipe - mainly because I had accidently picked up wholemeal flour instead of wholewheat, and the recipe didn't have any sugar in it. Since marmalade isn't known for it's sweet taste I was worried they would just end up bitter and unpleasant. It turned out this wasn't miles away from the truth...

The mixing instructions just suggested mixing it together until the dry ingredients are moistened....ew? In the end I had something that looked suspiciously like brown goo and I thought 'this isn't going to look great'. I plopped them into the muffin cases and waited for them to spread out like the cupcake mixture I was used to. Nope. It just sort of sat in the middle of the case...

Sadly when I took them out the oven 15 minutes later they looked exactly the same, just a little browner. Quite bitter and they didn't rise and shape so looked more like rock cakes.

They tasted fine but you definitely noticed the lack of sugar in these ones.  As I made tea I shouted through to boyfriend to find out how they tasted and he described it (reluctantly) as a 'healthy tasting treat'. Hmmm....Unconvinced with these but I'm not giving up. I suppose I was sort of hoping they'd turn out like little cupcakes that I could build upon but they're just too....stodgy. Nice, but not quite what I was after.

Weight Watchers ProPoints: 4
Calories: 137