When I was 21 I stopped eating meat. Not due to moral, spiritual, or nutritional reasons. I just didn’t like it enough to prepare it for myself, and I had one too many experiences with meat that my mama hadn’t prepared, and decided I was done! But, I was in college at the time and really needed to discover new (economical & transportable) options to get a solid amount of daily protein.

My go-to protein source became muffins! I started baking muffins at home and putting all kinds of nutritional goodness in them:
🍎Fruits: blueberries, bananas, blackberries, cranberries, apples, lemon juice/zest, orange juice/zest.
🥕Veggies: zucchini, carrot, pumpkin, squash, sweet potato.
🥜Nuts: walnuts, almonds, PB, pecans.
🌻Seeds: chia, sunflower, flax.
🥥Nutritional Flours: whole wheat, almond, coconut.
Healthy fats: organic butter, ghee, coconut oil.

I also kept out all the unnecessary or unhelpful ingredients baked goods often seem to require. I scaled back all the added sweeteners to test how far the natural sweetness of fruit could go for my taste buds. (My testing crew liked this part the least 🙃🤣). Though I don’t have a gluten intolerance I tested non-wheat flours to learn about their textures and study if my digestion varied. When re-introducing sweeteners I tested honey, agave, sugar in the raw, coconut sugar, maple syrup, and dates.

Thanks to friends, family, and roommates who were willing to test my baking concoctions, I was able to refine my recipes along the way. I dedicate much less time to this hobby now, and am in a totally new season of testing out ingredient combos that exclude all allergy foods our family avoids, but I still think healthy baking is so much fun!

Maybe you don’t really like eating fruit. Or maybe nuts or seeds are not your thing! But maybe it would work to put these nutritious foods within homemade muffins.😉

Have you ever tested your favorite muffin recipe, with healthier ingredient substitutions? If so, how did it go? What notes did you take-away?