Last week, I spoke for a group of nurs­ery school teach­ers on healthy snacks for preschool­ers. When I asked the direc­tor whether the kids cooked in school, she men­tioned that they made muffins but need­ed health­i­er ideas. Hey, who says muffins can’t be healthy? These get their mois­ture from pureed fruit or veg­gies. You can pump up the whole grain with whole wheat flour; use white whole wheat for a lighter col­or than reg­u­lar whole wheat. Don’t use too much oil or but­ter – nobody will know the dif­fer­ence. And of course toss in a bit of crunch, and healthy fat, in the form of nuts or choco­late chips.

Here’s what you need to make 12 Cook­ing By Num­ber muffins.

Dry
1 tea­spoon spice
1 1/2 tea­spoons bak­ing pow­der
2 cups flour
3/4 tea­spoon bak­ing soda

Wet
1 egg
1 tea­spoon extract
2 cups puree
3/4 cup light brown sug­ar
4 table­spoons oil or melt­ed but­ter

Per­son­al­i­ty
1/3 cup crunch

Here are some ingre­di­ent ideas to get you start­ed. Mix and match to cre­ate your own fla­vor com­bos.

Spice – Cin­na­mon, gin­ger, all­spice, car­damom, nut­meg (pick one or two)
Flour – White whole wheat, whole wheat, white all-pur­pose
Extract – Vanil­la, almond, hazel­nut
Puree – Apple­sauce, banana, prune but­ter, pump­kin, sweet pota­to, car­rot
Crunch – Mini choco­late chips, sliced almonds, chopped wal­nuts, chopped pecans

Now that you’ve picked out ingre­di­ents, here’s what you do with them:

  1. Pre­heat the oven to 375°F. Spray a 12-cup muf­fin pan with cook­ing spray.
  2. To make your own puree, mash fruit or cooked veg­gies with a pota­to mash­er or process in the food proces­sor until smooth.
  3. Stir togeth­er the dry ingre­di­ents in a large bowl.
  4. Stir togeth­er the wet ingre­di­ents in a medi­um bowl until well-blend­ed.
  5. Add the wet mix­ture to the dry ingre­di­ents. Stir until just blend­ed; avoid over-mix­ing. Gen­tly stir in the crunch.
  6. Spoon into the muf­fin pan and bake until the tops are light­ly browned, about 20 min­utes.
  7. Allow to cool for 5 min­utes and then remove from the pan. Left­overs can be frozen.