BANANA ORANGE MUFFINS

Besides making soups, I like baking. Not the fancy tarts, multi layered cakes with different kinds of frosting or fancy cheesecakes but breads, muffins, pies and cookies. It is what I call the basic food groups. Besides the cookbooks that I collect which are kept in their bookcase, I keep an organized and tabbed recipe binder. My binder is organized much like a cookbook and similar food groups are kept together. I have one section on muffins, breads and cereals. I decided tonight to make a great low fat muffin. If you are counting points, one muffin is one point on WW.

The recipe calls for a ripe banana. I did have a banana in a bowl on the counter but that is the last banana left in the house and the dog has its name on that banana. Each morning the dog gets a banana hand fed to him in small bite size pieces. The DH feeds him the banana each morning and the dog will follow the DH around the kitchen until he is feed his banana. The banana is like his dessert as he would have had his dog food kibble before the banana. Instead of the banana I used an apple. I didn't peel the apple but cut it up and threw it into the blender along with the other wet ingredients. What makes this recipe extra good is that you don't peel the orange so you get the taste of the rind plus the fibre. I think my sister-in-law gave me this recipe a number of years ago.

Banana Orange Muffins

INGREDIENTS

3 cups bran

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup raisins

½ cup wheat germ

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

¼ cup oil

¼ cup molasses

½ cup honey

1 egg

1 ¾ cup milk

1 large orange not peeled

1 large ripe peeled banana

DIRECTIONS

Mix dry ingredients and raisins in a large mixing bowl.

Put oil, molasses, honey, egg, milk and banana in a blender. Puree the mixture.

Cut the orange up into quarters or smaller pieces. Put in the blender and puree the mixture but try to have the mixture still a bit chunky.

Pour the contents of the blender over the dry ingredients and mix to moisten.

Fill muffin tins with the mixture and bake at 350 degrees F for about 20 minutes. Makes about 2 ½ dozen muffins.

Mi