Muffins!

So I've been dabbling with muffins.

The one thing I love about breakfast--more than pancakes, french toast, even croissants-- is muffins. I love breakfast muffins; the savory muffins, large or texas sized and none too sweet. Since I've been on the Dukan Diet I've tried at least half a dozen muffin recipes, with very limited success; they look good, but taste flat. They taste like that oatbran galette, plus whatever flavoring you put in, and stick terribly to the paper liners (I started greasing the papers in the end, but that didn't solve the taste!). I need a muffin to taste wholesome, full of body--more like quick bread than like held-together oatbran. Well, I was leafing through some middle eastern baking blogs yesterday (trying to figure out what to do with my rosewater), and found a recipe for yeast-based muffins. Well the recipe wasn't Dukan adaptable, but the idea stuck. I'd just made homemade butterscotch yogurt (google 'homemade yogurt in a thermos', and add 1 tbsp extract to your milk before heating; the alcohol in the extract will evaporate because alcohol has a lower boiling point), and thought it would be a perfect solution for my leftover whey (the liquid from the yogurt)--if you don't have leftover whey from the homemade yogurt you just happened to be making, use warm water; that's what normal people use.

Anyway, this is the recipe for soft, non-wet-and-sticky, wholesome, filling savory muffins:

For 3 large-sized (jumbo?) muffins

6 tbsp oat bran 120

6 tbsp wheat bran 72

1 tbsp corn flour 30

6 tbsp milk powder 90

2/3 tsp baking powder

ultimate test: what does the inside look like?

2/3 tsp salt (I used 1/2 tsp of hawaiian black sea salt--sounds fancy huh... I'd say 2/3tsp normal salt, or 1/2 tsp sea salt)

1 tbsp cocoa 15

1 pckt active dry yeast

3 tbsp warm whey (or warm water), mixed with 1 tbsp yogurt

2 tbsp yogurt 20 (mine was non-fat buttermilk yogurt, not greek--use whatever flavor appeals to you)

2 eggs 160

1/2 tsp each extracts: chocolate, butter, butterscotch--again, be inventive! If you use plain yogurt, try vanille-chocolate-butter; or, try maple syrup and butter; or, just 1 1/2 tsp of vanille!

Preheat oven 390F

1. sprinkle yeast onto the warm whey/water and yogurt mix, leave for 5 minutes and then whisk to dissolve

2. add all other ingredients and mix--first dry, then yogurt, then eggs (room temperature!), then extract

3. mix in yeast 

4. pour into 3 large-sized baking cups

5. bake for 5 min, lower heat to 350F, bake 10 minutes more

look ma, i don't stick!

p.s: each muffin is 170 cal--daily allowance is 1 muffin on cruise phase

p.p.s: you can make 6 normal sized muffins if you want