Starting off with the right muffin

In an effort to get back on track with my eating after a very unhealthy holiday season I baked some carrot banana muffins that I found in the January 2010 (yes- a year old!) issue of Everyday Food by Martha Stewart.  The recipe can be found here, on the Martha website.  I left out the raisins as I'm not a big raisin girl!

Here's how mine turned out - pretty tasty looking - and I sampled one right out of the oven - they're very tasty indeed!  And at only 186 calories a piece, perfect snacks :)

Using yogurt in baking

For some reason I keep trying to like vanilla yogurt. Mainly because it comes in such a lovely large container size unlike most other flavors. Yet - everything I try it it is just not what I'm looking for. But I didn't want to toss out a whole container of yogurt. So I thought that a simple google search would pull up an easy recipe to utilize a lot of the yogurt.

I found an oatmeal raisin muffin recipe on the Dannon website - and thought that sounded perfect! I doubled the recipe and froze half the muffins - and left out the raisins because I didn't have in the house. They came out really well and are a bit healthier than a normal muffin.

Oatmeal Raisin Yogurt Muffins

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup raisins, plumped
• 1 cup Dannon® Light 'n Fit® Vanilla, Cherry Vanilla or Strawberry nonfat yogurt
• 1 large egg, beaten lightly
• 2 Tablespoons canola oil

Directions:

• 1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
• 2. Lightly grease 1/2 cup muffin tins or use paper liners. In bowl stir together flour, oats, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and the raisins; in another bowl whisk together yogurt, egg and oil.
• 3. Stir the yogurt mixture into the flour mixture and stir the batter until it is just combined.
• 4. Divide the batter among 10 cavities and bake the muffins on the middle oven rack for 22-25 minutes.

Yields: 10 Servings