Before we go any further, let me just state, for the record,  I’m really not a muffin person. If I’m going to eat copious amounts of sugar, fat and flour, I would prefer to ingest it in the form of a cookie. The fact that some people delude themselves into thinking that muffins are actually a healthy way to start the day irritates me. Your Raisin Bran Muffin is 360 calories and contains 10 grams of fat! You would be better off starting your day with a Chocolate Dipped Donut. with only 210 calories and 8 grams of fat! My husband is a muffin person. Enough said!

However, I digress. This is not a post about delusional breakfast idiots. Rather, it is a story about a wonderful Raw Apple Muffin, created by the incomparable Marion Cunningham, from her lovely little gem of a cookbook, “The Breakfast Book.” I meant to blog about this muffin last summer. I even got so far as baking them and taking the pictures, but then I must have gotten distracted with this.  But I was gently dragged back to these muffins by my daughter. She is dating a muffin person and he was coming for a visit. She wanted to bake something for him. I agreed that these were outstanding muffins, high praise indeed, coming from me, the notorious muffin hater. I took the pictures and she baked.

I hesitate to even call these muffins.  They are more like apples and raisins held together with a bit of batter. When you are mixing the batter you will probably look at the ingredient list and think you missed some liquid. You didn’t. This a supremely dense batter. It is best to use an ice cream scoop to transfer the batter to the muffin tin.

I have adapted Marion’s recipe slightly by gilding the lily. When these muffins come out of the oven, I dip the top of them in melted butter and then roll them in a mixture of sugar and cinnamon. I am under no delusion that these are healthy, but they are delicious. The huge quantity of apples and raisins makes them super moist. The sugar cinnamon topping adds a bit of crunch. Muffin nirvana!

Click here to print the recipe for Raw Apple Muffins.