Applescotch Spice Muffins

I'm always on the hunt for a new, 'as healthy as possible without sacrificing taste', light apple muffin. Sadly, my track record for making tasty apple muffins isn't very good. They always tended to be bland and/or dense. Until this recipe! I decided to take the bull by the horns and make my own recipe and boy is this a keeper!

For a muffin that has whole wheat flour in it, it's certainly light and has a nice spicy flavour to it that my whole family loved. In fact the 18 muffins I made a couple of days ago are all gone and these were requested for school lunches. It didnt' hurt that I kind of bribed the kids with the butterscotch chips in order to get them to try an apple muffin. The chips did add a nice sweetness to the muffin and with only 1/2 cup between 18 muffins I don't think it hurt the overall healthiness too much.

Next time I make these I'm going to try to increase the whole wheat flour to 3/4 cup and see how that affects the lightness of the muffin. Enjoy!

1/2 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 medium tart apple (ie MacIntosh) - peeled, cored and finely diced
1/2 cup butterscotch chips

Preheat oven to 350F. Line muffin tins with paper liners or grease well.

In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat until smooth. Add vanilla and applesauce.

In a medium bowl, combine flours, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, baking powder and baking soda. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and slowly mix until just combined. Fold in diced apple and butterscotch chips gently. (Note: overmixing will create tough, dense muffins)

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of a muffin comes out clean. Cool on wire racks. Keep in a well-sealed container or freeze.


Yield: 18 small muffins