For the muffins I make in my Tiny Desk Kitchen show, I use a recipe from America's Test Kitchen. To bake muffins or cake with honey instead of sugar, America's Test Kitchen recommends the following formula. Use a 1:1 replacement of honey for sugar. So if the recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar, use 1 cup of honey. Now, this will make your batter more liquidy, so to prevent that, reduce other types of liquids in the recipe -- like milk, sour cream, juice, yogurt -- by 25 percent. But don't reduce essential fats, such as butter, even if it's melted, or eggs. You'll also need to reduce the oven temperature by 25 degrees Fahrenheit; cooking with honey tends to make things brown faster.
The chefs at the test kitchen don't suggest subbing honey for sugar when making cookies; you'll end up with some soggy little guys.
Makes a dozen muffins
Prep time: 5 minutes
Total time: 50 minutes
3 cups all-purpose flour, plus 1 tablespoon
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups plain low-fat yogurt
2 large eggs
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries
1. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 375 degrees. Generously coat a 12-cup muffin tin with vegetable oil spray.
2. Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a large bowl. Whisk the yogurt and eggs together in a medium bowl, mix in grated lemon zest. Gently fold the yogurt-egg mixture into the flour mixture with a rubber spatula until just combined. Fold in the melted butter. Mix by hand 1 tablespoon of flour with blueberries, coating them. This prevents the berries from bursting and turning the batter blue when you fold them in. Gently folded in the coated blueberries into the mixture.
3. Use a large ice-cream scoop or measuring cup to divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out with just a few crumbs attached, 25 to 30 minutes.
4. Let the muffins cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then flip out onto a wire rack and let cool for 10 minutes before serving.
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