Date & walnut muffins
Posted by kathryn in Breakfast
I’ve been slowly working away at this muffin recipe for about 6 weeks now, tweaking, testing then re-tweaking, until there was a huge eureka yesterday when I finally cracked it. There are a gazillion muffin recipes out there, so why all the bother? Well I had certain requirements for my muffins. I wanted each one to contain at least one serving of fruit, to contain walnuts, to taste really good and to have no added fat and very little added sugar. Basically I’m trying to make a more healthy muffin, the kind you can eat for breakfast, without feeling guilty.
And yes, I’ve achieved all of those things, with this recipe. These muffins are not fat free: walnuts, flour, yoghurt, milk, all have fat in them, however there’s no added oil or butter, so they’re definitely lower in fat than most muffins. Plus 30% of the fat comes from the walnuts, which is primarily Omega 3 essential fatty acids, which are good for heart health and so on.
I’ve used dried fruit in these, in this case dates and raisins, although I’ve also made them with apricots and raisins. If bananas were a reasonable price , they would would work well too. The jam doesn’t add a lot of flavour, but it does give an intense sweetness, with less sugar.
I’ve been having these muffins for breakfast with a piece of fresh fruit and am really enjoying them. If you wanted to use them as a snack, or for kids, you could halve the recipe and make them in a mini-muffin tray. For little kids, I’d also leave out the walnuts.
This is my contribution to Saffron Trail’s Weekend Breakfast Blogging .
Date&walnut muffins
Serves 12- 200g dried dates
- 1.5 cups plain wholemeal flour
- 2 teaspoons mixed spice
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 cup raisins
- 1 cup walnuts, broken into large chunks
- 1 cup yoghurt
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup milk
- 4 tablespoons apricot jam
Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease a 12 hole muffin tin.
Pour hot water over the dates, and put them to one side to soften.
Sieve together the flour, mixed spice and baking soda. Add in the raisins and walnuts and stir to combine.
In a separate bowl whisk together the yoghurt, egg and milk.
Drain the dates, reserving 2 tablespoons of the soaking liquid. Put them with the jam and soaking liquid, into a food processor and pulse together. You want them to be combined and for the dates to be slightly broken down, but there still to be some lumps. Stir this through the yoghurt mixture.
Add the yoghurt and dates to the flour and mix together until just combined – do not beat, or over-stir. Spoon the mixture into the muffin tin and then place in the oven for 20 – 25 minutes, until golden brown on top.
Nutritional information per muffin:
Total kilojoules: 944kJ; Protein: 6g; Total Fat: 10g (mostly mono&poly-unsaturated); Saturated fat: 1g; Carbohydrate: 29g; Fibre: 5g; Sodium: 32mg (without adding any extra salt); Number of fruit serves towards daily total: 1 serve; Additional nutrients: potassium, iron, zinc, Omega 3 essential fatty acids, antioxidants.
Technorati tags: Muffins , breakfast , walnuts , Omega 3 , Fatty acids .
24 November, 2006
Comments
Have just printed off this recipe and will try soonest. Love the fact that there is only 1g of saturated fat in these and they are low enough in kjoules to have for breakfast. Was the milk skim or full fat – does this matter?
Hi there Husky Heaven – I used low fat milk (not skim) and full fat yoghurt, but to be honest, even if you cut both down to skim it wouldn’t make little difference to the total kilojoule and fat content. The yoghurt and milk only comprise 6% of the fat and 5% of the kilojoules.
Instead it’s the flour, walnuts and dried fruit that make up most of the kilojoule content, while the walnuts are primarily responsible for the fat content (ie 82%). Walnuts are fantastic for you and full of lovely Omega 3 essential fatty acids. They’ve been linked to lower cholesterol levels and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, so they’re a good food to include in your diet.
However, if you’re looking for a lower joule muffin again – today I’ve baked some nectarine, walnut and ginger muffin. I’ve reduced the walnuts in these, plus used fresh nectarines, instead of all the dried fruit. They are DAMNED GOOD and only have 478kJ. I’ll be posting the recipe next week.
I so want to try these out over the weekend… A few q’s though:
a) 200g dried dates is how many cups.. any idea? :)
b) I dont have “wholemeal flour” at home, and want to use something that is already there in my pantry… I do have whole wheat flour and plain old regular flour.. Could I use a mix of these instead, what do you suggest?
Thanks for such a healthy recipe, I am also always striving for healthy recipes, esp when it comes to sweet stuff.
Hi there Alison – 200g of dates is about 1.5 cups (that’s Australian cups, which equal 250ml). Straight wholewheat flour would work, or combined with regular flour, would also be fine – depending on how dense / bran-y you want the muffins to be. If it was me, I’d probably do 1 cup of wholewheat and 0.5 cups of plain.
And let me know how you find the muffins, it’s always useful and kinda nice to get feedback. I also have a recipe for nectarine and ginger muffins, that I’m going to post when I have a spare half hour.
Hey. I had to brign a recipe in for school. (A healthy one) And I choose this recipe. When we finally got to make them they tasted AWESOME! Keep the recipes coming. My teacher loves ‘em! (That means pleanty of A’s!)
Caitlin
Caitlin, I’m glad the muffins went well for you and thanks for letting me know!
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