Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Blueberry banana protein muffins!

My neighbor Tammie picked local blueberries last week and brought me a bag of these beautiful plump yummies to help her enjoy, and I have been scrambling trying to use them in addition to the rest of our crop share bounty from last week. Luckily I've been 3 for 3 with recipe attempts this week (I have yet to post one of a healthy pasta-salad modification) and this one is definitely no exception. Muffins are delicious but usually they are a cloud of calories that often you overlook because of the pre-portioned "package".

Interestingly enough, the original recipe for these muffins came from Eating Well. They provided me with the previous recipe for the cobbler that was a total hit, but this recipe needed some tweaking. The original claimed to make enough servings for 12 muffins to come in at 232 calories/muffin. After eyeballing the finished batter mix, I estimated I could stretch it to at least 18 muffins, if not the whole 24. Sure enough, I EASILY made 24 muffins out of the SAME recipe that was created originally for 12. So folks, even with seemingly healthy recipes, there are usually ways to doctor them up and make them more healthy. You can see from the picture that I didn't skimp on distributing the batter across 24 muffin tins instead of 12 (and I could use new muffin tins but that's besides the point).

I did add vanilla whey protein powder to the mixture, and included a bit more milk to offset the added dry ingredients. Even with adding the protein powder scoops (260 calories/two scoops), each muffin still came in at only 127 calories each! Here is the finished product, and as you can see, they're not mini muffins by any means. Actually, adding the protein powder firms them up a bit and helps create the taste-illusion of fiber, not protein. At any rate, you still think twice about eating two, and in the event that you do eat two, they're both less in calories, sugar, fat, cholesterol, etc. than your average bakery muffin.








The original recipe is found here at the Eating Well website. For my protein-packed version, I simply distributed the original recipe into 24 muffin tins instead of 12, and added two scoops of vanilla whey protein powder to the finished batter along with about 1/3 cup skim milk to keep the batter moist. You could use any number of fresh fruits too, so don't feel obligated to stick with blueberries and bananas. I think this recipe would be great with strawberries or raspberries too! ENJOY!  PS- there is a reason doctored up is italicized, and hopefully a year from now I can tell you why :) Stay happy and hydrated, it's HOT outside!

1 comment:

  1. These are wonderful! I had mine with a slice of grilled pineapple for dessert...yummmm :)

    ReplyDelete