Mia Bakes: Healthy Date Muffins

 Hey lovely readers, it has been a while since my last post! Been bogged down by work and also overseeing renovation works of my new BTO. Hopefully there will be more baking (& cooking?!) recipes up here once I've settled down into my new house!

Anyway, here's a super quick and easy recipe for a healthy, dates muffin! Well, initially I wanted to make some sticky date pudding because there's 3 boxes of deglet noor dates in the house. But after preparing the "cake" portion, I got lazy to follow up with the caramel sauce and so.... a healthy date muffin it shall be! 

So let's get over with the ingredients, so we can get started!

To get 12 muffins, you'll need:

250g pitted dates

1 tsp baking soda

250ml boiling water

40g unsalted butter

40g unsweeten applesauce

185g plain flour

30g brown sugar

30g white sugar (I used stevia)

2 eggs

1.5 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

60g pumpkin seeds + roughly chopped walnuts

(or whatever seeds/nuts you fancy)

*60g of sugar makes a rather mild-tasting (not sweet AT ALL) muffin, do add more sugar if a sweeter tasting muffin is desired

In a clean bowl, add in your pitted (and roughly chopped) dates, baking soda and boiling water. Leave to soak for 20 to 30 minutes, until it has cooled down. 

In another bowl, add your butter, sugar and applesauce. Whisk until well combined. Crack in the eggs, one at a time, whisking until each egg is well combined before adding the next. Then, fold in the dry ingredients (flour, salt and baking powder) with a spatula until there's only a few stray pockets of flour left before folding in the dates mixture. Fold until nearly combined before folding in the pumpkin seeds until just combined; do not overmix! 

Spoon the batter into 12 muffin cups and bake in the oven that's pre-heated to 180 degrees Celsius for around 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. 

As mentioned earlier, these muffins are not-sweet-at-all (in spite of all those dates) with a bouncy, chewy texture, and make quite a decent (healthy) breakfast muffin! 

I've actually eaten mine with some peanut butter for breakfast, YUMS!

Till then,

Mia Foo

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Mia Bakes: Kinako Applesauce Muffins

Couple months ago, I chanced upon Kinako (roasted soybean flour) at Daiso and quickly picked a pack up, planning to make myself some injeolmi or some other form of mochi/glutinous rice cake snacks....

But I never did. xp

So these happened instead.

As I also happen to have a couple more mini tubs of applesauce leftover, I decided to bake myself some applesauce kinako muffins!

So to get 8 ~ 9 small muffins, you'll need:

45g salted butter

40g castor sugar

25g kinako

100g all purpose flour

225g unsweetened applesauce

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla extract

your choice of toppings/fillings, however little or much as you fancy

(I've used dried cranberries+pumpkin seeds & mini chocolate chips+chopped peanuts)

Making these healthier (less butter & sugar?) muffins can't get any simpler for it's pretty much a one-bowl recipe, unless you're indecisive and greedy like me and wanted to bake 2 variations at the same time. 

In a clean bowl, whip up your soften butter slightly before beating in the castor sugar until it's fully combined. Then add in the applesauce and vanilla extract and give it a whisk until combined. You may find a little separation/curdling of the butter from the applesauce, but that's perfectly fine. 

Then, add in all your dry ingredients and fold until just combined (or even a few streaks of flour is also fine) before adding in however much (or little) or your favourite topping/filling and folding until just combined. 

Drop the batter into your lined or greased muffin tins until they're 80% full (they'll puff up in the oven, but will drop back down and flatten when cooled) and bake them at 180 degree Celsius for around 20 - 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean (no wet batter, just a few moist crumbs). 

The texture of these muffins made (nearly) wholly from applesauce as the wet ingredients are extremely moist and soft, nearly fudgey, almost like they're under-cooked. 

So if you're not the type who'll appreciate an (overly) moist muffin, then you might need to reduce the amount of applesauce and replace them with some milk instead. 

The addition of Kinako added a fragrant, nutty flavour to the muffins, which is soooooooo good! 

As you can see, it was go big or go home for me on the fillings for this particular bake. 

Gave 2 of each flavour to Sa and she commented: The fillings are more than flour, very shiok! 

HAHAHA!

Well, it's always my dream to bite into a muffin and be welcomed with a mouthful of chocolate chips, so.... HEH!

Till then,

Mia Foo

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