The day started out with freezing rain, and now the fluffy snow is falling, so it seemed like a good time for some baking. I wanted something not too sweet, so I thought of muffins made with whole wheat flour. I looked around the freezer and cupboards and counters to see what kinds of muffin ingredients I might have and ended up making these cranberry-apple-orange-walnut muffins:

I have adapted a so-called healthy recipe that has been posted in a few places, but I suspect the original might have come from here: Whole Wheat Cranberry-Orange Muffins

I say so-called because I am always suspicious when a baking recipe does things like substitute applesauce for butter. It means that there will be a lot of sugar in the recipe to make up for the lack of fat, added sugar as well as the sugar in the fruit. I put the fat back in, in the form of butter, and cut the added sugar in half by eliminating the streusel topping. I’ve used streusel on muffins before in this blog; I just wasn’t in the mood for the extra sugar today.

But I added half a chopped apple to my half cup of chopped cranberries, and those apples probably equal the same amount of sugar in the applesauce; still, I used only a total of one cup of fruit. It’s the added sugar I worry more about than the sugar in fruit. The muffins have that hearty, nutty, fruity taste and texture I was looking for, so I’m very happy about the changes I made. What kinds of changes do you make to recipes to make them fit your taste?