I am always on the lookout for good healthy muffin recipes, chock full of whole wheat goodness. They are great to have in the freezer to grab for a quick breakfast or snack on the way to the gym because, frankly, my standard low-carb choices don’t give me the energy I need to make it through a hard boxing workout and I hate getting dizzy half way through. (Don’t worry, I don’t actually I fight. I just train like I am going to). The recipe in Mark Bittman’s column this week caught my eye because not only is it 100% whole wheat it also calls for mashed pureed fruit. I had some pumpkin leftover from making a pumpkin cake that needed to be used up and pumpkin was one of the options he recommended. What really interested me is that he promised a light muffin instead of a dense hockey puck like many whole wheat muffins. Now I love the flavor of whole wheat but don’t love the dense chewiness that so often accompanies it, so I was very excited by this prospect.

The muffins turned out light and flavorful just as promised. I like muffins with stuff in them so I added pecans and dried cranberries and they were delicious.The pumpkin flavor is quite subtle. The muffins taste like whole wheat more than like pumpkin muffins, but were a lovely color from the pumpkin puree. (If you are looking for good pumpkin muffins that taste more pumpkin-y and aren’t quite as healthy try these). This is a great base recipe that I will be sure to use in many variations. It has a more sugar than I like in a healthy muffin so I might play around with reducing it a bit, but overall I am quite pleased.

It was also a great opportunity to try out a new product. A few days ago I bought some coconut milk kefir thinking it might be a good buttermilk substitute. Since this recipe calls for buttermilk it was a good opportunity to try it out. It worked great! There was not even a hint of coconut flavor and the texture was lovely. I will have to try it in some other recipes to see if I like it better than my standard homemade buttermilk substitution, but is is definitely a good soy-free option.