Apple Muffins: the healthy ones

Once upon a time, muffins were little nuggets of slightly sweet bread that often hid little treasures. They were considered a tea bread or a breakfast bread, and were eaten smoking hot with a bit of real butter.

And then something happened. Over the past few decades the innocent muffin was judged with a fishy eye. Someone decided they should be sweeter and they turned into more cake than tea bread. Someone else decided that the top was the best part and muffin tins were redesigned so the the muffin became almost all top. They became huge, so that they could become a profitable item in shops. Things started to be added to the muffin, things like chocolate and other candies, streusels, and really, I stopped eating them about then so I can barely tell you what was added, other than to say that it didn’t ever seem to be other than sweet. The muffin became a sin, described as “sinfully good” or “worth the calories” and instead of a nice, small thing Mum might make to feed the family, the muffin was then an enormous three dollar blob of fat and sugar with various candifications which was supplied by overpriced coffee shops.

Stop it. Just stop it. Do not allow yet another marvelous treat to become a fast food horror! A muffin should remain simple enough for a kid to make, healthy enough for a kid to eat and should be planted squarely on the flag of the American kitchen.

This muffin recipe began it’s life as a secret recipe of a tea room in Boston of the Twenties and Thirties. My mother worked there as a girl for a while and like the rest of the girls who worked for this very proper tea room, she lived with the owner. They became friends and when she left she was given the recipe along with another even more secret, which I have unfortunately lost.

Apple muffins

makes 12 sane muffins

If you are not using muffin papers, like the foil ones in the picture, grease well and flour normal muffin tins with 12 spaces.

1 egg
1/2 cup (125 ml) milk
1/4 cup (62 ml) vegetable seed oil
1-1/2 cup (195 g) plain flour, sifted
1/2 cup (105 g) sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

2 cups (500 ml) of coarsely grated apple… I use the food processor… skin included, but not the core.

1 tablespoon brown sugar
a few shakes of cinnamon
a few shakes of nutmeg

Heat the oven to 200°C or 400°F.

Measure the wet ingredients using a liquid measuring cup. First the milk, then the oil, then the egg. Use a fork to beat the egg slightly into the liquids.

Measure the dry ingredients into a bowl. Using a mixing spoon or a whisk, add the liquids to the dry, mixing quickly until all is dampened. Add 1-1/2 cups (375 ml) of the grated apple and stir in. Distribute the batter among the muffin cups.

In the bottom of the empty batter bowl, put the rest of the apple, the brown sugar and the remaining spices, and mix briefly. Using your fingers, divide this mixture pinch by pinch and place on top of the raw muffins.

Put them in the oven and bake 20 to 25 minutes until just done. Remove and cool on racks for as long as you can bear, then eat them warm.

I don’t have any way to tell you precisely how many calories there are in those, nor how they compare to other muffins, but I can tell you that every time I have been fed a bit of a modern, souped-up, super muffin I have wished it were one of these. They are filled with invisible fiber, because the apple inside disappears, they are low in fat, of reasonable size and just delicious. They helped pull a small tea room through the Great Depression eighty years ago, and they quite cheer me up, too.

I’ve made them for three different Italian families over the past weeks and they get a thumbs up from everyone. Tina, to whom I delivered them as a post-flu vitamin treat, called them “perfetti”. Maybe you will too?