Healthy Gingerbread Muffins

My Monday morning was a mad dash to send the youngest off to school,to walk the dogs that are staying with us for a month,complete my 5 mile walk/run, bake muffins, clean the house and shower all before lunch time. The older I get the more my get up and go drags on more and more. I could balance so much more than I can now and it irks me a bit. My ability to juggle everything is increasingly becoming more and more sloppy..

The important thing in all of this of course is that I baked muffins! My husband is home for another two week vacation so what better way to celebrate it. Well he probably would of loved a huge muffin filled with chocolate,nuts,caramel and anything else I could squeeze in there but our days of eating high calored foods without gaining weight are pretty much long gone. I say all this of course fully knowing that he’s going to make nougat tomorrow and I have some kind of caramel chocolate thing I want to bake this week. I guess it’s good I baked some healthy muffins today 🙂

Do you like gingerbread? I do but I can’t eat a lot of it. I was never one to run for the gingerbread men cookies and I must say that we baked them only once or twice growing up. I do like certain molasses based cookies though and since I have never had a gingerbread muffin before I figured now was the time to try it. I have a seriously difficult time finding light molasses here. I can find blackstrap sometimes and actually use that in one of our favorite cookie recipes but light is only found in international stores and it comes at a hefty price. I had to use blackstrap since thats all I had. I added in less than the amount called for because of the strong taste it had. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best!

We liked em’! I think they would of been 100 times better with the lighter molasses so please make sure you use that when making these but over all you get a delightful moist muffin that pairs well with a hot cup of coffee.

Healthy Gingerbread Muffins

• 2 cups Whole Wheat Flour
• 1 tsp. Baking Soda
• 1/2 tsp. Baking Powder… my add in
• 1/4 tsp. Salt
• 1/2 tsp. Ground Cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. Ground Ginger… can add more if you like the taste
• 1/2 cup Milk… your choice. I used fat free
• 1/3-1/2 cup Brown Sugar… you pick the level of sweetness
• 1/4 cup Light Molasses
• 1/2 cup Unsweetened Applesauce

Cinnamon Sugar Topping:

• 2 TBS Sugar
• 1/2 tsp. Cinnamon

** Combine ingredients in a small bowl**

Preheat oven to 350 or 180 celcius. Spray a 12 cup muffin tin with nonstick spray and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour,baking soda,baking powder, salt, cinnamon and ginger.

In a medium bowl combine the milk,sugar,molasses and applesauce. Pour the wet into the dry and mix until combined.

Divide batter evenly among the muffin tin. Sprinkle the top with the cinnamon sugar mixture and bake for 10-15 mins or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool for 1-2 mins in the pan before removing and allowing to cool completely on a wire rack.

Yield: 12 Muffins

Source: Southern In-Law

Originally posted on Home Cooking with Sonya.