Healthy Berry Muffins

This is another red, white, and blue recipe, but this one is for breakfast.  They are bursting with berry flavor not only from the berries you see, but also from the berry puree in the batter.  And, they gave me a chance to try out a new idea I had with chia seeds.  I wanted to use stevia as the sweetener, but it calls for liquid sweetener, but all liquid sweeteners are a bit thicker than water.  So, I soaked the chia seeds in water until they formed a gel and mixed the sweetener into that giving me a thicker-than-water, healthy sweetener to mix into my muffins.  Feel free to use a different sweetener.  The original recipe calls for 1/4 cup of agave nectar, honey, or maple syrup, so you could just substitute that for the water, chia seeds and stevia.

This recipe was adapted from this strawberry muffin recipe at Healthy Food for Living who supposedly adapted it from an oatmeal blueberry muffin recipe from Joy the Baker (I couldn't actually locate the recipe, but don't want to slight anyone).  There are several adaptations including the chia seed mixture.  Hope you enjoy!

Healthy Berry Muffins

yield:  12 muffins

1/4 cup water

1 1/2 tsps. chia seeds

1/2 - 1 tsp. stevia extract powder

1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour

1 1/4 cups rolled oats

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup blueberry applesauce (Regular applesauce will work well too, but the blueberry adds a bit of extra berry flavor.)

1/2 cup strawberry puree (Just puree about a cup of strawberries in the food processor)

1/2 cup low fat buttermilk

2 Tbsps. canola oil

1 tsp. vanilla extact

1 egg

1/2 cup coarsely chopped strawberries

1/2 cup blueberries

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Line a twelve cup muffin tin with cupcake liners.  Mix together water, chia seeds and stevia.  Set aside to gel.  Whisk together dry ingredients.  Whisk together wet ingredients, including the chia seed mixture.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir just until all ingredients are moistened.  Fold in the berries.  Evenly distribute the mixture into the muffin cups and bake for approximately 20 minutes or until a pick inserted into the center of one muffin comes out clean.

Source:  Healthy Food for Living