High Fiber Apple Muffins

I've always thought of muffins as being really easy to make but the last few attempts I made at making them have been pretty disastrous and turned out heavy and tough. I think trying to make them wholegrain makes it more difficult for them to rise but even so i still got something pretty wrong. I've been thinking all week that I'm determined to make light and fluffy wholewheat muffins (I know I need to get out more!), and so that's what I set out to do today. I wanted to make some of the giant, light and fluffy muffins that you get in Starbucks that rise so much that they spill over the side of the muffin case. I tried every tip i could find to make them as light as possible and filled the muffin cases nearly to the brim but I still didn't get the muffin top I was after.

However they did still rise quite a bit and the texture was the lightest and fluffiest I've ever been able to achieve in a whole wheat muffin so I thought I'd share how I made them anyway even though I wasn't 100% satisfied and I have definitely not finished on my quest for a healthy, Starbucks style muffin recipe. 

Ingredients:

200g Wholewheat self raising flour

50ml sunflower oil

80g golden caster sugar

2 apples

2 medium eggs

120 mls semi skimmed milk

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon.

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.

Mix flour, salt, cinnamon and baking powder well and then sift into a large mixing bowl.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then add the milk oil and sugar and beat together.

Grate the apples and add to the wet mixture. Leave the skins on.

Combine the wet and dry ingredients until only just mixed.

Fill muffin cases to the brim and bake for 25mins. This should make 8 muffins

The general consensus seams to be that the trick to getting muffins light and fluffy is to sift the flour and not over-mix the batter. That is why I mixed the dry ingredients and then sifted them to keep as much air in the flour as possible. I also read that a good tip to help them rise is to lightly grease the muffin cases which I did but seeing as they didn't rise that much I don't think that helped.

Health-wise 1 muffin contains around 225 calories. Although they do contain a little bit of caster sugar 80g make 8 muffins so that's 10g per muffin. OK that's still fairly high but compared to a Starbucks apple and cinnamon muffin which contains 28.4g sugar and 430 calories its not looking so bad. My muffins also contain 4.2g of fiber, over a quarter of the recommended daily amount. I leave the skins on the apples when I grate them as they add more fiber and I don't mind the texture. They are a great pre workout snack. In fact I had one today about 30 minutes before I went running and I had loads of energy.
Plus they taste really nice!

If anyone has any tips on how to get muffins to rise better please do let me know.