Blueberry Muffins: Good and Good for you!

This one is for you Ashley!  After the VitaMix adventure, or should I saw disaster, the other day I was craving a really good blueberry muffin.  Healthy food should still taste good or there's no way people will keep eating it!  At $6.25 a box, the Blue Bran VitaMix muffins are a definite waste of money.  Good old fashioned whole wheat blueberry muffins from scratch are so much better and a whole lot cheaper.

To find a recipe, I just did what I always do.  I opened up Google.  After reading several recipes I was shocked to see why many of them were called "healthy".  Recipes containing more than a 1/4 cup of oil, some containing 1 cup of butter, and large quantities of white or brown sugar were all classified this way.  I'm not sure who they were trying to fool, but it wasn't me!  The recipe I finally stopped on and the one that Gray and I made for breakfast this morning is here.  I was happy to see the nutrition information given with the recipe which made it easy to compare to the VitaMix muffins.

The VitaMix muffins are healthier but that difference to me is not significant enough to justify the difference in taste.  I want a recipe I can keep coming back to that lets me still enjoy breakfast.  While the VitaMix muffins have 100 calories a piece and are labeled as fat free, the whole wheat blueberry muffins I made are only 112 calories each and have a total of 3 grams of fat (less than 1 gram of that is saturated fat).  Both muffins contain 3 grams of protein, although the VitaMix muffins contain more fiber.

Don't be scared off by the long list of ingredients for the whole wheat blueberry muffins.  Although it has 3 times the number of ingredients as the VitaMix muffins, I had everything on hand already.  And the list sounds much more appetizing than the VitaMix that calls for egg whites and water.  Our little man thoroughly enjoyed the large list as well, because he had more opportunities to "help mommy" and dump each ingredient into the bowl.  Once everything was combined it already looked (and tasted) better than the VitaMix.

After about 20 minutes of Gray asking to eat a muffin already, I was finally able to pull them out of the oven, and then after another 5 minutes of him now begging for a muffin I broke down and gave him a still very warm muffin.  I was much happier with the final appearance and delicious smell filling the kitchen, something that was lacking with the VitaMix ones.  Gray asked for seconds and also snuck a bite of a third while I wan't looking.

I made this recipe exactly as listed, however I may try change a few things next time to make it even healthier.  I wonder how it would turn out using 2 eggs whites instead of 1 whole egg and also using 4 tablespoons of unsweetened applesauce instead of 2 tablespoons of oil and 2 tablespoons of the applesauce.  I may also try using all whole wheat flour as well.  I don't think it could get as bad as the VitaMix muffins were but I also want to maintain that deliciousness of a nice warm blueberry muffin.