Chocolate Strawberry Yogurt Muffins

This whole giving-up-sweets-for-lent thing is not working so well for me this year.

Complications arose when Valentine’s Day decided to occur immediately after Ash Wednesday.  My sacrificial hopes were thrown to the wind when I came home from mass to find my sweet husband bent over a pot of melted chocolate making me chocolate covered strawberries.   I couldn’t let him down, and I had to eat the leftovers the next 3 days because he made them “just for me”

This weekend, I’m in Florida with my mom to celebrate my grandmother’s 83^rd birthday.   About a minute into our car ride from the airport, my mom asked me to make a chocolate birthday cake.  I mean, I can’t make my grandma a birthday cake and then not eat any of it with her, right?

It’s a hard life I live.

In between the chocolate covered strawberries and chocolate birthday cake, I made these muffins.  

Muffins would normally go in the breakfast category, as opposed to the dessert category, wouldn’t you say? 

You could argue that these muffins have chocolate in the mix, which classifies them as dessert.  I would counter that they are relatively low in sugar and have very little fat.  And they have strawberries. Totally breakfast. 

(By the way, if you’re bypassing the whole breakfast/dessert debate and just want some chocolate in your muffin, add ¼ cup of chocolate chips. You won’t regret it.)

Chocolate Strawberry Yogurt Muffins

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

½ cup cocoa powder

2 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

¾ cup sugar

1 cup plain, vanilla or strawberry greek yogurt

3 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

4 tablespoons canola oil

4 tablespoons applesauce

½ cup diced strawberries (fresh or frozen)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spray muffin pan with non-stick spray or put in muffin liners. (makes 14-16 muffins)

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Then whisk in sugar.

In a separate small bowl, mix eggs, yogurt, vanilla, oil and applesauce. Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Mix until just combined. Fold in strawberries.

Pour batter into muffin pan and bake for 18-20 minutes, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

As I said, these muffins are not overly sweet. If you’d like yours sweeter, increase the sugar to 1 cup.  Or, do as Adam and I did--zap them in the microwave for 20 seconds and eat them with a slather of brummel & brown and a drizzle of honey. So dang good.

 Also, if you use muffin liners, and, like me, have little self-control around baked goods, be warned that the muffins stick to the liners when they’re hot out of the oven. Wait about an hour and they should come out just fine.

Muffins were adapted from this recipe.