Muffin Recipes: Where Healthy Meets Happy

Muffin Recipes: Where Healthy Meets Happy

Carbohydrate counting be damned. These muffins are too good to pass up—and good for you, too

By Sarah Karnasiewicz in the Wall Street Journal

IF THERE’S an upside to insomnia, it’s the discovery of heretofore hidden hours in your day. You can fight it, of course, stubbornly counting herds of sheep or reciting state capitals in the hope of summoning sleep. Or you can do as I have of late: Rouse yourself from the sheets and march to the pantry to whip up a sweeter sort of relief.

After all, the night kitchen has long been a haven for bakers. (Ever think about how those warm pastries get to your coffee shop each morning?) Maybe croissants are a bit challenging before coffee. But muffins? Those anyone can manage, and on the sharp, dark mornings of early autumn, no one should resist. Preheat the oven, stir up a simple batter and drop it into tins while the fog is still lifting from your eyes—and be amazed by what you can accomplish before breakfast.

Adapted from ‘Flavor Flours’ by Alice Medrich

I do realize that as a morning repast, muffins have lately gotten a bad rap, tarred and feathered as glorified cupcakes and labeled nutritionally bankrupt by the food police. But don’t believe all the hype. Portable, satisfying and amenable to all manner of experimentation, these cup-size quick breads have abided as a breakfast-table staple with good reason. And done right—judiciously sweetened and generously studded with grains or fruits or seeds—they’re plenty nourishing, too.

In the modern age, the ur-recipe for “virtuous” muffins is the Morning Glory. First served at the Nantucket bakery of the same name, this back-to-the-land baked good of unbleached or whole-wheat flour spiced with cinnamon and vanilla is laden with crushed pineapple and shredded apple, carrot and coconut. Conceived in the late 1970s and revealed to the world in a 1981 issue of Gourmet magazine, this muffin has a combo of carrot-cake sweetness and wholesome hippiedom so suited to its time that before long it was de rigueur everywhere from country inns to office coffee carts.

Three decades on, its novelty may have worn off, but there’s no denying the Morning Glory’s enduring appeal. Dense with fruit, it stays moist for days, travels well and requires not so much as a smear of butter or jam. Nutritionally, it’s nothing to sneeze at either: A scattering of nuts packs in good fat and fiber, and carrots and apples add a wallop of vitamin C, beta carotene and other antioxidants. Best of all (at least to this early-morning baker), it’s forgiving. Low on carrots? Swap in some grated beets or zucchini, or—my favorite—parsnip, which provides a bit of bite. Exchange walnuts for pecans, or add a flurry of toasted pepitas instead. Consider it less a recipe than an opportunity to tidy up the crisper.

‘Dense with fruit, it requires not so much as a smear of butter or jam.’

Of course, some days you wake up craving new flavors, not old comforts. That’s how I recently found myself sitting at my kitchen table before sunrise, thumbing through a copy of dessert maven Alice Medrich’s new book, “Flavor Flours,” a sophisticated (and decidedly un-hippie) primer on using alternative flours like corn, oat, buckwheat and sorghum to add complexity to baked goods. A sucker for the nutty taste of buckwheat, I immediately zeroed in a deep, dark buckwheat-pumpkin loaf shot through with fragrant fall spices that just happened to be gluten-free to boot. Ms. Medrich baked hers in a loaf pan but mentioned it could adapt to a muffin tin as well. So, why not?

The batter couldn’t have been easier—though I did make a few small modifications of my own, swapping in chopped prunes for raisins and throwing in the contents of a half-used bag of extra-dark chocolate chips for good measure. (If you can’t sleep, you may as well treat yourself.) When I pulled them from the oven 20 minutes later, the results—dark as midnight, delicately sweet and surprising—were glorious, indeed.