Eggless Whole Cornflour-Strawberry Muffins

I have been baking eggless cakes using Yogurt/ Dahi [Indian curd] as an egg substitute and been getting good results. This time decided to use apple sauce. I read somewhere that apple sauce not only replaces eggs also fat. Looks like this is true, this time I used just half amount of vegetable oil . My cake was super moist too, do you think its because of apple sauce?
Now coming to the corn flour...I used Bob's Red Mill 100% stone ground whole grain cornflour. I combined with equal parts of unbleached whole wheat flour. I noticed cornflour adds slight gritty texture to the cake. This is my first time baking corn cake, wasn't sure of the cornflour-whole wheat ratio, just decided to try half and half and it worked.

Ingredients: [makes 6 medium sized muffins]

Dry ingredient:
Yellow whole cornflour - 1/2 cup
Bleached whole wheat flour - 1/2 cup
Baking powder - 1/2 tsp
Baking soda - 1/ 2 tsp
Salt - pinch
Wet ingredients:
Vanilla essence - 1/2 tsp
Table sugar - less than 2/3 cups* [I would suggest 1/2 cup]
Apple sauce - 1/4 cup [I used Gerber baby food]
Vegetable oil - 1/4 cup
Milk - 1/4 cup
Strawberries - 1 cup, chopped

Method:

• Grease the muffin pan and pre- heat oven at 350 degree Fahrenheit 
  
• Sift all the dry ingredient at least three times. Sifting mixes the ingredients properly, also incorporates air in the mixture which helps in raising the batter while baking
• Mix wet ingredients by a hand blender on a medium speed for 1 minute [don't add all the milk at once, save a little to adjust the final consistency of batter]
  
• Fold in the dry ingredients and blend again for 1/2 minute. 
• Now add chopped  strawberries, mix gently and pour the batter in muffin pans 
  
• Bake for 30 minutes or until tooth pick inserted comes out clean

Notes:

• *I used 2/3 cups of table sugar and the muffins were on the sweeter side. I think half cup of table sugar would have been enough to provide the required sweetness.
  
• The batter rose quite quickly unlike in the past. I wasn't sure of getting the structure, but to my surprise muffins had nice crumbly structure, however they were more moist than regular muffins. I am thinking the extra moistness was due the the juices of strawberry in the batter.
  

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Event Participation

• Whole Grain (Egg Free) Baking Event – Corn hosted by Madhuram
• Show me your cake by Divya 
• Cakes-n-Cookies events both hosted by Sara's Corner