Recipe Makeover: Whole-Grain Chocolate Chip-Coffee Muffins

Last month, while leafing through a new issue of Cooking Light, I came across a delicious-looking Chocolate Chip-Coffee Muffin recipe. Chocolate and coffee? Sold!
Not only am I a lover of all things both chocolate and coffee, but I’m a total sucker for a good muffin. Sometimes there’s just nothing like a good carb-ypastry to go alongside your morning cup of coffee. The only problem: Often when I choose a muffin as my breakfast meal, I find myself hungry not even two hours later—a far cry from the four to five hours that my usual whole-grain breakfast allots me.

As I looked through the Chocolate Chip-Coffee Muffin Recipe, I realized that with a few simple substitutions I could make it not only heart-healthier but chock-full of fiber too! Follow the three easy tweaks I made, and you’ll be biting into guilt-free goodness in no time!

• 2/3 cup whole milk (Here I substituted plain soymilk, such as Silk, to decrease the fat content while keeping the creamy texture)
• 5 tbsp. butter, melted (To cut down on cholesterol but retain moisture, I halved the amount of butter, using only 2.5 tbsp. and adding 2.5 tbsp. of fat-free plain Greek yogurt to make up for the remainder)
• 9 oz. all-purpose flour (about 2 cups) (To up the fiber content and increase the staying power of these muffins, I used 2 cups hard white whole-wheat flour, such as Bob’s Red Mill, in place of the all-purpose)

I’m pleased to say that replacing the all-purpose flour in this muffin with whole-grain flour did the trick perfectly in terms of keeping me full longer, and the moist, fluffy nature of the original recipe was not sacrificed thanks to the hard white whole-wheat flour. Now that’s what I call a successful recipe makeover!