Mixed Berry Muffins

I got blueberries on a good deal at the market last weekend and I had frozen them, but wanted to bake something with them. I found a reasonable recipe in my go-to book for special meals and family dinners, Jeanne Lemlin's Vegetarian Classics. This was one of the first cookbooks I owned and almost all of the recipes I have prepared from this book have been keepers. I highly recommend this book.

I say reasonable recipe, because it doesn't use whole grains, but I have learned to modify recipes to add nutrition value. I made quite a few changes, and I need to write them down for next time, so here's a post for a non-bread baking attempt.

The last time I made 12 muffins using a berry muffin recipe I found online, the batter seemed less and the muffins barely reached the tops of the pan. This may be because I use silicone muffin pans and their volume is larger (I don't have a tin pan to compare). So this time I decided to make some additions to increase the volume of the batter, along with improving the nutrition.

I have given the original recipe and my substitutions in case you would like to make the original recipe.

Original recipe	My recipe
1 ¼ C frozen mixed berries	1 C frozen blueberries ½ C frozen raspberries, cut in half
2 C unbleached flour	2 C whole wheat pastry flour 2 T wheat germ 1 T cracked flaxseeds
½ C (=8 T) sugar	3 T sugar 3 T turbinado sugar 2 T agave nectar
1 T baking powder	1 T baking powder
¾ t salt	¾ t salt
2 large eggs	2 large eggs
1 t vanilla extract	1 t vanilla extract
1 ¼ C low-fat milk	¾ C 2% milk ½ C unsweetened applesauce
6 T butter, melted	3 T butter, melted 3 T vegetable oil
C = cup T = tablespoon  t = teaspoon	-

Method is the usual:
Sift dry ingredients together (coat berries with 1 T of dry mixture and keep aside).
Mix sugars and wet ingredients together.
Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Do not overmix.
Gently stir in berries. Do not overmix

Bake 20-22 mins in a 400° F oven.

Out of the oven

Nice rise. (I like silicone-ware a lot, because it doesn't need greasing
and baked goods come out easily)

Cross-section.

Muffins taste good, not too sweet not too crumbly, with moisture and tartness from the berries. Some might say they are hardly sweet, but we don't like overly sweet foods (with some exceptions, of course). These are making a good post-meal dessert for us. Best of all, they were very easy to put together.

-RPH.