These tasty treats may seem like the ultimate indulgence, but even something as decadent as chocolate muffins can be made healthier with a few simple substitutions.
First, take a look at the ingredients in traditional chocolate muffins:
To make these muffins, you preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and then mix all of the ingredients together except the butter, which you fold in last. Bake them until you can insert a wooden pick into the center of the muffin and pull it out clean (generally 20-30 minutes depending on the size of the muffins).
There are a couple of things you can do to turn this into a low fat and low sugar recipe. First, instead of the butter, substitute half applesauce and half buttermilk (or keep half the butter instead of buttermilk if you prefer). How does this help? Even a ½ cup of salted butter has 900 calories and 92 grams of fat. The applesauce, by contrast, has 50 calories and no fat. If you're using sweetened applesauce, then you can also reduce the amount of sugar you add to the recipe. This substitution gives the muffins the same consistency as butter, just be careful not to over-bake it or the muffins could dry out.
To make this even more of a low sugar recipe, you can eliminate 1/3 to 1/2 of the sugar. Then replace the sugar with spices like cinnamon or nutmeg, or use flavorings like vanilla extract or almond flavoring. You can also leave out those optional chocolate chips.
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