Fruity Muffins

From March 2009 Recipes, Reviews and Other Photos

Lucky for me, many more bakers and cooks are using agave nectar instead of other sweeteners in their recipes these days. Back in March, Andrea posted this lovely recipe for Healthy Fruited Muffins that she had adapted from Canyon Ranch Cooking. I'm not sure what her changes to the original recipe were, but I wonder if agave nectar was one of them.

From March 2009 Recipes, Reviews and Other Photos

Because I was puzzled by the yield of just 7 muffins, I doubled her recipe and added lemon juice and more agave nectar because the batter was just so tart. It wound up filling several mini muffin tins as well as a few cups in my standard muffin tin.

This recipe looks like it would be a snap to veganize -- just add oil instead of butter, use almond or soy milk for the dairy, and use the flax trick for the egg. Also, I'd add a little baking soda for some lift.

My muffins turned out to be very light, moist (but not too moist), and just tarty enough to be very satisfying. The texture of my muffins looked markedly different than Andrea's, but my guess is that the additional lemon juice broke down more of the whole wheat's bran. It's just one of those baking things. Whenever I bake with whole wheat flour that isn't whole wheat pastry flour, I add a citrus juice. It does magical things to the texture and makes the resulting baked good into a baked great!

Have you tried this in your baking?