Wholemeal blueberry and apple muffins

My biggest downfall when it comes to eating healthily is my insane need to eat anything sweet within a two mile radius. If I could remove my love of sugar then my diet would be nearly perfect. Unfortunately that's not possible and I enjoy it too much to want to stop, so I merely compromise with myself now and again (which is easier said than done!). Pretty sure my dream home would consist of me living in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory... ok maybe that's a bit extreme, but you get the idea, I really love anything sweet and sugary! yummmy!!

Luckily eating healthily means everything in moderation, so I don't have to skip out on my sugar fix. But even with good nutritional knowledge I still find all the information the media throws at us super confusing and I know it can leave people not knowing what's good or bad for us.

Recently sugar has been associated with the tagline - sugar the socially acceptable drug, which to many people it is. Unfortunately from this statement we automatically put all foods which are high in sugar into the one group.....including fruit. One question I get asked quite frequently is whether fruit is high in sugar, and the answer is yes! Of course it contains sugar, what else makes it taste so sweet. The important difference to remember is that fruit does not provide us with the empty calories that sweets and chocolate do. Fruit is high in the vitamins, minerals and fibre which are essential for the normal functioning of our body. So we need to remember that sweets and chocolate provide us with empty calories whereas fruit doesn’t!

So based on this I decided to develop a few recipes which would satisfy my need for sugar but are also reasonably healthy. I have combined a few of my favourite recipes and this was the result! Hope you like it :)

Lou <3

Wholemeal blueberry and apple muffins

This recipe makes 10 muffins

Prep 15 mins

Cook 25mins

preheat the oven to 200⁰C

Ingredients

100g Wholemeal flour

60g plain flour

40g porridge oats

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp cinnamon

50g golden brown caster sugar

2 dessert spoons of Stevia (sweetener)

1 apple peeled, cored and chopped

1 handfull of blueberries

100ml semi-skimmed milk

50mls low fat natural yogurt

1 egg beaten

50g low fat butter melted (I used low fat lurpak)

Method

Mix in the two flours, the oats, baking powder, cinnamon, sugar, stevia, chopped apples and blueberries.

In a separate bowl add in the milk, natural yogurt, egg and melted butter and mix until combined.

Combine the wet and dry ingredients together gently stir until combined.

Divide the mixture between the muffin cases and sprinkle a few porridge oats on top and a tiny amount of brown sugar (this is optional, it is purely for presentational purposes).

The trick I use is to make the make the muffins slightly smaller, so the portion size is reduced.

Bake in a preheated oven for 25mins or until risen and golden.