Could whole wheat apple muffins made without eggs, dairy, sugar, or leavening agents possibly be any good? Well, apparently these ones were memorable enough that, many years after tasting them at the age of eight, I found myself craving them again.
An email to my mother, followed by a phone call to a family friend, revealed that the recipe originally came from Edward and Wendy Esko's Macrobiotic Cooking for Everyone. Armed with a scan of a well-worn cookbook page, I was curious to see whether the recipe was as good as I recalled. In many ways, it was. The apple-packed muffins were juicy, as I remembered and loved them, and they had just the right amount of natural sweetness.
And yet, not being macrobiotic, I did feel the urge to enhance them a bit. The macrobiotic diet limits the use of spices, and the original recipe called for just 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon (optional). My adaptation incorporates more cinnamon, freshly grated ginger, nutmeg, and cloves. Otherwise, I left things as they were, sweetening the muffins only with apple juice and keeping the dense but satisfying mix of whole wheat and whole wheat pastry flours.
These aren't the fluffy, super sweet muffins one eats as an excuse to have dessert for breakfast. Rather, they are a genuinely wholesome, filling, and refreshing food to start the day. Filled with luscious seasonal apples, I find them a wonderful antidote to all the rich and sugary foods around us this time of year.
p.s. Having been raised around health food nuts, I was a bit skeptical of my own taste buds. Would anyone else actually like these muffins? Were they worthy of sharing? My non-hippie boyfriend says, "Everybody enjoys eating muffins in the morning, but they often leave you feeling gross, like you had a cake or a pastry. These are hearty and not overly sweet and leave you feeling like you had the best of both worlds." Whew!
Apple Muffins
Makes 12 muffins
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, plus more for sprinkling
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
3 tablespoons corn oil (or canola or safflower), plus more for greasing pan
1 3/4 cups unsweetened apple juice
1 1/2 teaspoons finely grated fresh ginger
3 apples, diced
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 12-cup muffin pan and set aside.
In a large bowl, combine the flours, spices, and salt. Add oil and mix well. Add juice and ginger and stir until combined. Fold in the apples.
Heat muffin pan in oven until warm. Remove pan from oven and divide batter evenly among the muffin cups. Sprinkle tops with cinnamon.
Bake until golden brown, about 25 to 30 minutes.
Adapted from Edward & Wendy Esko's Macrobiotic Cooking for Everyone (Japan Publications, 1980)
Thanks to Edward Esko and Karen S.!
Related: Easy and Portable Breakfast Recipes
(Image: Emily Ho)
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Comments (15)
Yes! Although I'm baffled by the lack of sweetener and leavening agent (honey? baking powder?)...I'd substitute bran for a portion of the flour to make these extra high in fiber.
It does look like something is missing, are these just very dense? I can see the apples and apple juice adding some sweetness, but how do they rise?
@gabrielaskitchen Good idea!
@Anne (in Reno) Yes, they are quite dense. Possibly an acquired taste (or rather, texture) for some, but they are certainly filling! :)
I wonder if that's the same cookbook we used to giggle over when I used to work at a used bookstore. It just had this hilarious line, when arguing why everyone should adopt a macrobiotic diet that went something like:
"In the last year, have you ever been angry? Even just once?"
We used to find that hysterical. Maybe you had to be there.
Still, I got a few good recipes out of it, like one for couscous and chick peas.
Cool, I might have to try these this weekend!
Do you think you could substitute the oil with applesauce?
I don't like overly sugary stuff for breakfast either. These sound like they'd be yum served with a bit of cheddar too. I'm going to try baking them sometime soon.
This looks great! I love my muffins thick and grainy and without much sweetness. Which generally means that no one else wants to have any, but that's ok by me.
These sound great. I am always looking for healthier on-the-go breakfast foods, and these sound like they would be perfect for hectic mornings. I would probably try substituting the oil for some unsweetened applesauce though, and maybe some baking powder to help the raise a bit and be more fluffy.
Wow; these look incredible...I may just have to whip these up for Thanksgiving morning! Great recipe.
I made these, and thought they were really strange at first. Then I found myself craving those odd "muffins." Now I'm back to make them again! They are very dense and moist, like eating an apple-y ball of dough.
These look nice, I've got all the ingredients, I might just whip some up tonight! Thanks...
Interesting. I've been making muffins "fattened" with a combination of applesauce, canola oil, and yes, a little bit of butter. These are a little more hardcore healthy, but they sound good.
In one word: different. Surely a guilt-free breakfast item. But I couldn't resist making a few tweaks: baking power, flax seed, and tsp baking soda to give it some rise. The results? The muffin inside was still moist and dense without being too gooey. Next time, I think I'll add a packet or two of raw cane sugar.
@nloveichni How much baking powder did you use? I would love to try your less-dense version!