Do You Know the Muffin Man?

I know the muffin man... and he's FAT. While I have to admit muffins are tasty, they are loaded with sugar and fat and even the reduced fat options often weigh in around 450 calories and upwards of 9 grams of fat (also coming in around 7 ww points*).

In my quest for a delicious, easy, grab-and-go breakfast food, I came across a lightened up cranberry muffin recipe. And then I did something unimaginable ... I lightened it up even more!

By substituting a few ingredients, I believe I managed to make the most scrumptious, low cal, low ww point breakfast muffin.

No-More-Muffin-Top Cranberry Muffins

Ingredients:
1 1/4 C whole wheat flour
1/2 C uncooked old fasioned oats
1/4 C splenda
1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 C fat-free vanilla yogurt (I used 2 light and fit 60 calorie cartons)
1/4 C skim milk
1 serving of applesauce
1 tbsp. 0 calorie spray butter
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 C dried cranberries
1/4 C crushed pineapple (in juice)
Zest of 1 orange

Steps:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Spray a 12-cup muffin pan with cooking spray.

Combine flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, orange zest and salt in a large bowl; mix well with a fork, make a well in the centre and set aside.

Whisk together yogurt, milk, applesauce, spray butter, pineapple and vanilla in a small bowl. Fold mixture into dry ingredients until blended; fold in cranberries. Spoon batter into prepared pan, filling each cup about 2/3 full.

Bake for 20 minutes or until inserted in center of a muffin comes out clean,. Allow to cool in pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes and eat!

Tips:
It seems like a lot of ingredients, but I promise you, these are super easy.

I recommend using unsweetened applesauce as a egg substitute, but if you wanted to use eggs, or an egg substitute it only needs about 2 tbsp. egg substitute (about 1 egg). Eggs are super easy to replace in baking recipes because they act as a binder, so replacing them doesn't take away much from the flavor.

Also, be careful when substituting sugar with a 0 calorie sweetener because they tend to be sweeter than sugar when giving the same amount.

As far as calories are concerned per muffin, I tried to do some basic calculations and I estimate about 500 calories for the flour, 120 for the yogurt, 60 for the milk, 50 for the applesauce, a combined 120 for the cranberries and pineapple and 150 for the oats. That's a total of 1000 calories. Divide that by 12, and you only have 84 calories per muffin, around 1 gram of fat and it definitely has some fiber. Not bad if I do say so myself!