Mia's Recipe: Healthy Applesauce Chocolate Muffins

Well, I should be putting up my Day 4 of my Hokkaido trip travelogue, but I have to say, travelogues is a b*tch. Anyway, it's going to be up real soon, so do stay tune! 

Meanwhile, let's look at some healthy sweet treats!

Craving for some chocolatey sweetness but not the ridiculous amount of fats or calories? 

Let me share with you my trick - APPLESAUCE! 

Yes, you can replace butter with just applesauce (doesn't work for every kind of baked goods though) and get equally yummy baked goods at just a fraction of the calories! 

So let's get over the ingredients so we can get started. 

For roughly 12 muffins, you'll need:

65g all purpose flour

60g wholewheat flour

42g unsweetened cocoa powder

200ml plain greek yoghurt

1 large egg

130ml unsweetened applesauce

60ml raw honey

80g baking stevia blend (or castor sugar)

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp vanilla extract

optional:

(as much or as little) chocolate chips - I've used about 90g and thought I should have used MORE

You should add more if you're following my level of sweetness for the muffin batter. Otherwise, increase sweetness of the batter (100g sugar and 80ml honey) and add less of the chocolate chips or skip it totally. 

This is pretty much a one bowl recipe, or two, if you do not wish to sift your dry ingredients. Because cocoa powder is always quite lumpy, you would really have to sift out the lumps OR give it a good whisk in a bowl before adding it into the rest of the ingredients for your batter to mix well. So yeah, 1 bowl with sifting, or no sifting with two bowls, take your pick. 

Anyhow, add all of your wet ingredients into a bowl and mix until well combined, before sifting/adding in the dry ingredients and fold until you do not see huge lumps of flours (but not yet fully mixed) before adding in the chocolate chips and folding until JUST combined. You DO NOT want to over-mix your batter.

Then, distribute the batter equally into 12 muffin cups/tins and make sure they're UNLINED but coated with non-stick cooking spray or some oil. This is how you get your muffins to "climb" up as they bake and give you the cutesy muffin top. Otherwise you'll just end up with cupcakes, and that's no fun.

Another important factor to make sure you get the muffin top, is the baking temperature. First, bake your muffins at about 220 degree Celsius for about 5 minutes (and you start seeing your muffin top forming) before lowering the oven temperature back to 190 degree celsius and baking for another 15 minutes or so or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. 

You would probably want to bake your muffins using such tins instead of baking them in standalone silicon cups (like in the background) as not only those baked in silicon cups do not "climb" as high, the muffin top also OVERFLOWED as they formed, giving me some really ugly muffins. 

Having the side extensions of the tin will help to hold up your muffin top and give you really nice and even overhanging top like so. :)

With 90g of the chocolate chips, 1 muffin will set you back by just 110 kcals and if you add more stevia and honey and omit the chocolate chips altogether, it would be just 82 kcals! Where else to find such a diet-friendly treat? 

And do note that this is a diet-friendly treat, there is absolutely NO butter in this recipe and while applesauce (and greek yoghurt) can help to give you soft and moist muffins, they cannot give you the buttery, rich fragrance of a standard bakery muffin. 

So, try to manage your expectations alright? 

It's so low in calories! What else can you wish for, right?

Till then,

Mia Foo

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Mia's Recipe: Healthy 77 Calories Brownies

Yes, that's not a typo and your eyes aren't playing a trick on you. I'm going to share with you my recipe for a yummy, 77 calories brownie!

With no refined flour, no refined sugar, and no butter, this will be the perfect sweet treat for those watching your diet! Best of all, this doesn't taste healthy at all! 

To make your own 77 calories brownie (16 servings), you'll need:

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce 

1/2 cup honey 

(you may reduce it if you prefer your brownies less sweet)

2 eggs

1/2 cup wholemeal flour

(I've used 1/4 wholemeal and 1/4 low-carb mix, else with 100% wholemeal you should be getting 75 calories brownies instead) 

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

optional: chocolate chips or chopped nuts of your choice

(but do note these aren't included in my calorie count) 

It can't be any simpler to make this yummy brownies. First, add all your wet ingredients (honey, applesauce, eggs) into a bowl and mix till combined. 

Then, sift in your dry ingredients (very important to sift, especially for cocoa powders as  they're always lumpy) and mix until just combined. 

You may fold in your additional chocolate chips or chopped nuts before pouring the batter into a greased (or non-stick) 8 x 8 inch square brownie pan, for an easy time cutting them into 2" squares so you can gauge your calorie intake better.

Bake at 180 degree Celsius for 20 minutes and check that a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. 

Due to the wholemeal flour, the brownie will be slightly more crumbly but still stay soft and moist (due to the honey and applesauce). 

I find that even without the chocolate chips, I wouldn't mind having the brownie a little less sweet hence it's probably good to reduce another tbsp of honey from the recipe (to use about 100ml instead of 120ml) and to make up for the hydration level with some skimmed milk. 

Do share with me how yours turned out if you've tried this recipe as well. 

Edited: I've tried substituting butter with applesauce for breadmaking and it turned out quite terrible! Fellow bread-bakers, if you've ever successfully did a butter-applesauce replacement, do let me know how you did it!

To get the wholegrain and low-carb flour I've used for this recipe, hop over to iHerb right now! 

Till then,

Mia Foo

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