If I think of something delicious, my mind immediately brings me the cocoa muffins filled with soft chocolate.
However, despite being delicious, the recipe for preparing these muffins is rich in sugar and saturated fat.
There is nothing harmful in this (if consumed sparingly within a healthy and balanced diet, rich in fiber and unprocessed foods), but undoubtedly this aspect conditions the consumption of these sweets in everyday life, especially if you are following a low-calorie diet or in any case you have the objective of losing some fat mass!
Food is not absolutely good or bad, but the food choices we make every day condition our well-being in the medium/long term.
For this reason, we propose a lighter version of chocolate muffins, with no added sugar and low fat. An equally tasty alternative that however will weigh less in calories and may prove a whim consumed with a slightly higher frequency!
Why do I say "slightly"?
When you aim to lose weight and eat in a healthier way, you must also pay attention to all light products and all the "fit" alternatives of traditional desserts, This is because it is easy to fall into the trap of "is light so I can eat it", thus ending up eating too much and still taking many calories that will go to nullify the calorie deficit created in your diet!
It is not uncommon for people on a diet to confuse light/fat-free/sugar-free products for calorie-free foods, thus finding themselves eating too much of it.
Having said that, let’s go back to our chocolate muffins!
The dough is made of oatmeal flavor hazelnut and bitter cocoa, we will not use sugar but a little sweetener. This is optional since the flavored flour is already sweet of its own, however, if we want a sweeter flavor, I recommend you to compensate in this way!
We have already seen, in a previous article, that bitter cocoa without added sugar is an incredibly useful food for our health. It is rich in protective antioxidant polyphenols for our cardiovascular health and allies of our instestinal microbiota and is rich in mineral salts, in particular magnesium, manganese, iron and copper.
A curiosity linked to these cakes, the muffins, is that they are mentioned for the first time in England, in 1703 with the words "moofin". The muffins were not originally noble sweets consumed at court, but were prepared for servitude using leftovers from other preparations.
Surely muffins have had a nice evolution over the centuries! Up to variants of all kinds, colors and combinations of ingredients!
The chocolate muffins filled with hazelnut cream and chocolate will delight you with every bite, are soft and greedy, with the most delicious filling possible!
Ingredients
100g flour 00 or wholemeal or type 2
40g hazelnut oatmeal
1 pinch of sucralose or other sweetener
5g vanilla yeast for sweets
20g bitter cocoa
2 eggs
100ml sugar-free soybean milk/beverage
50g butter or coconut oil/seeds
For the filling of:
Hazelnut and choco cream
Proceeding
In a bowl, add all the dry sifted ingredients. Apart, mix two eggs with butter or oil. Add this liquid mixture to the mix of dry ingredients and stir well, add the milk to the wire until you get a smooth mixture and without lumps. The dough should not be mixed for too long because otherwise you will get some hard and soft muffins.
Grease and flour the molds for the muffins or use a silicone mold or pirottini, and pour the dough (2/3 of the total). Finally insert 1 teaspoon of cream in the center of each muffin.
Bake in a ventilated oven at 180 degrees for 15 minutes.
Bake and let cool to room temperature.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar and enjoy! Keep them in the refrigerator closed in an airtight container for 3 days.
Conclusion
We have seen how easy it is to make light cocoa muffins, filled with chocolate cream and hazelnuts, without giving up the taste. It is a quick recipe, for which you will need few ingredients. Hazelnut oatmeal is essential for the final taste!
