Posted on 3 Comments

Summer Berry Muffins 2.0

Summer Berry Muffins in progress Summer Berry Muffins ready to bake Summer Berry Muffins cooling off

Neil and went a little crazy picking wineberries last year. I froze much of our haul, which also included a small selection of black raspberries and blackberries that grew wild alongside the wineberries, and some blueberries I bought from a local farm. I’ve so appreciated having these berries handy over the past year! They’ve made it into a few fruit crisps, and at least two batches of scones. Delicious.

I was thinking about whipping up some more scones until Neil suggested I make something he can actually eat 😬

That was a fair request. I mean, I’m pretty sure he picked a lot more of those berries than I did, so maybe I could find a use for them that was a bit more heart healthy than a scone.  Since Neil’s heart attack nearly ten years ago, I’ve adapted many of my recipes to be less fatty or less salty, or both, but when it comes to our berry stash, my only appropriate recipe was for a Wineberry crisp. They are quite good, but I wasn’t really in the mood for one of those.

I thought a summer berry muffin recipe might hit the spot, so I adapted an old recipe and made a batch tonight after dinner.

Adapting an old recipe

Fourteen years ago, I made muffins with a stash of frozen berries, and they were very good.  The fat content was already in the OK range, and I knew that I could improve the salt situation. My usual procedure is to halve the amount of salt called for in the recipe, and replace the baking powder (which is heavy on sodium chloride) with featherweight baking powder (which uses potassium chloride instead). That’s usually enough to get the sodium to an acceptable level, and this recipe was no exception.

While I was at it, I made a healthy update for myself. Over the years, I’ve been doing my best to replace processed white flour with whole grains wherever possible, so I used white whole wheat flour instead of all purpose.

(There were a few other changes, but these were just substitutions of convenience, and served no health-based purpose.)

But how do they taste?

Summer Berry Muffins by Lisa Clarke

I started writing this post while the muffins were baking tonight, and it’s taken me so long to finish processing photos and tweaking my word choice, that they have already cooled, and Neil and I have each eaten one.

The verdict? We like 😋

They’re very much like classic blueberry muffins, but with the extra flavor of other berries mixed in there. And the white whole wheat flour is not overwhelmingly “wheaty” (though you can taste a slight difference from all purpose flour).

I’m looking forward to enjoying one with my coffee tomorrow morning!

The healthified Summer Berry Muffin recipe

Summer Berry Muffins by Lisa Clarke

Summer Berry Muffins 2.0

A heart healthy muffin for breakfast or snack time
Cook Time 25 minutes
Total Time 25 minutes
Course Breakfast
Cuisine American
Servings 12 muffins
Calories 188 kcal

Ingredients
  

  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup oil
  • 1 egg
  • 2 cups white whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 3 teaspoons featherweight baking powder or regular baking powder, if salt is not a concern
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 1/4 cups oat milk or other milk / milk alternative
  • 2 cups mixed berries

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 375F and prepare muffin tin.
  • Beat together sugars, oil, and egg. Add milk and dry ingredients. Fold in berries.
  • Bake for 25 minutes.

Notes

I used a combination of wineberries, black raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. Feel free to throw in whatever kind of berry you have on hand.

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size 1 muffin | Calories 188
Total Fat 6 g | Saturated Fat 1 g | Monounsaturated Fat 1 g | Polyunsaturated Fat 3 g | Trans Fat 0 g | Cholesterol 16 mg | Sodium 115 mg | Potassium 226 mg | 
Total Carbohydrate 30 g | Dietary Fiber 4 g | Sugars 15 g | Protein 4 g
Keyword dairy free, healthy, low salt, vegetarian

Summer Berry Muffins at Polka Dot Cottage

A note about the original original recipe

I mentioned that I made these before in 2008.

Those were based on a blueberry muffin recipe I found on a blog called Philigry.

Despite the fact that they’ve now gone through two sets of changes and may not resemble the source at all, I still like to give credit for my inspirations. Only it’s tricky this time. The Philigry blog is gone. A series of clever (if I do say so myself) Google searches have brought me to Katie Smith, who I think was the owner of Philigry. I poked around her Instagram for a while, but it seems she has moved on from muffin blogging. I could DM her on Instagram and ask if she happens to have a current link for a muffin recipe she shared in 2008  🤪. But with 23K followers (yikes!) she’s probably too busy to answer (or even notice) such a question.

Anyway, you should make yourself a batch of these muffins. If you do, I hope you’ll come back and tell me what you think!

P.S. I still have enough berries left for that batch of scones I wanted to make. Does anyone have any interest in that recipe? Because for you I will make a dough and bake it, and take some pictures, write a blog post, and force myself to spend the following few days having delicious scones for breakfast, and for mid-afternoon snacks, and maybe before bed, too. I will do this all for you because I am just that selfless 😆

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Posted on 3 Comments

3 thoughts on “Summer Berry Muffins 2.0

  1. Ooh, these look yummy! I love using white whole wheat flour for bread, but I never thought of trying it in a sweet recipe – next time I find some I’ll definitely try making muffins with it.

    1. I think sweet recipes are the only way I’ve used it. I haven’t made much bread lately, but I think it’s time to fire up the old bread machine!

  2. […] I made summer berry muffins tonight. They’re like classic blueberry muffins but healthier. The recipe is here. […]

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