Our pastry bakers along with our head chef, Glenn, have been revamping some recipes with the goal of making them both delicious and healthier. New this month is the double chocolate chip muffin. Along with some whole wheat flour, it includes coconut yogurt and pureed apricots! It is egg- and dairy-free.
Last month the lemon blueberry muffin debuted, just in time for local blueberry season. In addition to some whole wheat flour, the lemon blueberry muffin uses less sugar and has the addition of tasty lemon zest.
Amy Lorang, the pastry baker who worked on revising the recipes, shared this about the process:
With our new muffins we had two main goals: first, to make our muffins as interesting and delicious as possible; second, to make them as healthy as possible.
I first researched how much sugar is ideal in muffins. The King Arthur Flour blog has actually conducted experiments and determined that the ideal amount of sugar in muffins is 50% (baker’s percentage–that is, 50% of the weight of the flour). For each muffin, my first move was to look at our current percentage and reduce it to 50%. This actually worked really well! When you reduce the sugar it lets other flavors shine through–like the flavor of fresh, local blueberries.
The other thing I changed in each muffin was to add about 20% whole wheat pastry flour. This makes the muffin slightly healthier and adds a nutty flavor without affecting the muffin’s tenderness.
For the blueberry muffins, I also added lemon zest to make them into a more interesting “blueberry-lemon” flavor.
The double chocolate muffins were difficult because I couldn’t find a good dairy-free recipe anywhere. I must have tried fifteen variations. Adding coconut yogurt and applesauce kept them moist. There were a lot of other factors to balance as well: sugar, chocolate, egg replacer, flour… but I finally reached muffin perfection!