In response to many requests after a post about  Food, Emotions and False Creek  described my sinfully delicious Chock full-o-health bran muffins with golden raisins and apricots, I published my ad hoc recipe. Promptly got several appreciative comments. So why would one mess with success?

Well that was two years ago, and I have been enjoying these healthy bran muffins since. But after 5 months of enforced inactivity due to back pain and then recent back surgery, a strict diet regimen is needed to shed some extra pounds.

Metabolically I respond best to a low carb regimen but while I can happily do without pasta, rice, potatoes and such, every now and then I need something like my tasty, fibre rich muffins for comfort food. However, in my original recipe, each muffin had approximately 50 g of carbohydrates. My challenge was to see if  I could get it down to 25 g without losing any of the yummy taste and texture.

So I substituted almond meal and soy flour for the organic whole wheat flour, reduced the sugar by a third and the raisins and apricots by half, and mixed up a batch. The results are shown above.

To my surprise the muffins came out with a fluffier texture than the previous recipe produced and were quite delicious. I still need to experiment with the liquid - I think I coud reduce the quantity as  some of the muffins fractured instead of  popping out nicely from the flexible muffin pans 

So still a bit of fine tuning to do but I am almost there. On Monday I begin a strict low carb program and hopefully, if I can maintain it for a couple of weeks and slowly increase my workouts, the weight will start to budge.