Baking Mad's Low Calorie Blueberry Muffins

The whole ethos of this food blog is that you can have your cake and eat it i.e. you can lose or maintain weight by eating healthy but tasty. Likewise if you are interested in maintaining a healthy, balanced diet you will find that all my recipes are carefully balanced with a mix of whole grains, vegetables and lean proteins making the dishes naturally low in fat. 

So of course I was keen to try out some low calorie sweet treats and jumped at the chance to recipe test for Baking Mad using Silver Spoon's latest 'Half Spoon' product. It has a small amount of sweeteners added to make it twice as sweet and half the calories.  It's granulated form makes it ideal for baking.

There are a list of recipe ideas on the Baking Mad website and I decided to give the Blueberry muffins a go. The lovely people at Baking Mad sent me the recipe, the flour and half spoon then I purchased the remaining ingredients.  I carefully timed the baking of these on a day I was hosting a mum's coffee morning so to test them on a live audience! They are quick and easy to prepare with very little washing up and I managed to get them done before the school run which was pretty impressive!

All the mums liked the muffins. There were two main observations; 
1) The muffins were not overly sweet. Some may say not sweet enough but for me I liked them.
2) The muffins did not rise particularly well. You can see by the picture they look more like cupcakes without icing. I followed the recipe and made 12 muffins as the recipe stated but perhaps it could do with some added baking powder to get a better rise.

On the whole though a nice recipe and if you are after a sweeter taste my advice would be to up the Half Spoon quantity or use a naturally sweeter fruit such as ripe banana.  Hmmm, thinking that could be a good way to go especially as on the WeightWatchers plan bananas are 0 ProPoints!!

Ingredients - Makes 12

• 250g self rasing flour (I used Allinson Nature Friendly)
• 1.5 tsp baking powder
• 50g low fat margarine
• 75g Half Spoon Granulated sugar (Silver Spoon)
• 100g fresh blueberries
• 2 large free range eggs (I used Happy eggs)
• 235ml milk (recipe did not state full fat so I used semi-skimmed)
• Juice from half a lemon

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180c / 160c fan / 350f / Gas mark 4
2. Line a 12 hole muffin tin with muffin cases
3. Sieve the flour and baking powder together in a bowl, twice
4. Add the margarine and rub gently until it resembles breadcrumbs
5. Stir in the sugar and blueberries
6. Whisk together the eggs, milk and lemon juice
7. Add to the flour mixture stirring gently but not over-mixing
8. Spoon the mixture into the muffin cases and bake for 20-25 minutes
9. Allow to cool slightly and then serve warm

WeightWatchers ProPoints Per Blueberry Muffin:  4