We have been looking for a muffin recipe that feels a bit more healthy.  I know muffins aren’t supposed to be a health-food, but these ones, with the addition of oats, and using vegetable oil instead of butter seemed a bit less ‘naughty’ than others.

Although, we discovered that they taste delicious if you slice them open when they’re still a little warm from the oven and spread butter on them.  It defies the whole point of the healthier muffin, but if you’re that concerned about avoiding snacks, just call it lunch!

The original recipe came from our BBC Good Food 100 Cakes and Bakes book, but we tweaked it by adding dried apricots in place of some of the raisins and soaking the remaining raisins in orange juice. We made two versions from the same batch of mixture – regular size and mini-size.

Honey-Oat Muffins

Ingredients

• 250g plain flour
• 85g porridge oats
• 1tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 45g raisins, soaked in 100ml orange juice
• 40g chopped dried apricots
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 200ml milk
• 75ml vegetable oil
• 50g light muscovado sugar
• 5tbsp runny (clear) honey

Directions

Preheat the oven to 180°C fan/200°C regular /Gas mark 6 In a bowl, soak the raisins in the orange juice until needed.  If you can do this 30 minutes ahead of time, all the better. In a mixing bowl, mix the flour, oats, baking powder, spices, salt and apricots.  In a separate bowl, combine the eggs, milk, oil, sugar and honey together. Drain the raisins and add them (minus the orange juice) to the bowl with the flour etc. Then add the egg mixture and stir gently until just combined.  It will be quite runny. Grease 8 holes of a muffin tin (or, if you are doing mini muffins, set out 16 mini cupcake cases on a baking tray).  Spoon the mixture into the holes / cases to fill to the top. Bake for 25 minutes (large muffins) (15 minutes for mini muffins).  When cooked so that a cake tester comes out clean, remove from the oven, leave in the tin for 5 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to continue cooling.