sugar free banana, raspberry and yoghurt muffins

As part of my quest to reduce my sugar intake (while still baking with the little fella), I adapted a few muffin recipes to come up with this one: a sugar free raspberry and banana muffin. I had some over ripe bananas and leftover frozen raspberries, so the flavour combo was based solely on what needed using up in the house.

These aren’t as sweet as what they would be if they had sugar in them – brown rice syrup isn’t as sweet as sugar. But after the initial bite and a change in expectation, I found I actually quite like these less sweet variety better. Also, the ripeness of the bananas will affect the sweetness – over ripe are best.

When it comes to substituting rice syrup for sugar, you need to remember two things: the first is that rice syrup isn’t as sweet -  it has more of a malty taste, so you will need to add more to get the required sweetness (the general recommendation is 1 1/4 cups to 1 cup of sugar). The other thing to keep in mind is that it’s liquid, so you will need to reduce the other liquids in the recipe to compensate (by approximately 1/4 cup). Sometimes it’s just a matter of trying a recipe a few times a fiddling around until you have something that works and that you like.

If you would prefer to use sugar, add 1/2 cup of raw sugar and add a little extra yoghurt or milk as necessary.

Makes approximately 12 regular sized muffins or around 30 mini-muffins.

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and lightly grease muffin tins with a little butter.
2. Melt the butter and let cool slightly.
3. Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl and add back the husks.
4. Combine all of the wet ingredients in a jug (or the saucepan / nuke-bowl you melted the butter in – who needs extra washing up, right?). Add to the dry ingredients along with the raspberries and mix until just combined.
5. Spoon mixture into muffin tins and bake for 20 – 25 minutes for regular sized muffins or 10 – 15 minutes for mini-muffins. Test the centre  – they will be done when sharp knife / skewer comes out clean. Let cool in the tin for five minutes before inverting onto a wire rack to cool. Store in an airtight container (in the fridge if it’s very hot and muggy).

Have you read these posts?

1. Banana and Yoghurt Bread
2. raspberry, oat and white chocolate muffins
3. orange and poppy seed mini muffins
4. apple and almond meal muffins
5. ‘leftovers’ choc banana cake