The muffin recipes on this website are made with wholemeal flour, which makes them more filling than muffins or other cakes made with white flour - so when you've eaten one wholemeal muffin, you don't automatically think that you need another one.  The recipes include dried fruits, because they're something juicy to chew-on, which makes each muffin a longer-lasting treat. The raisins or sultanas that are used in the Spiced choc-chip and Double choc-chip muffins are soaked in hot water before using, so that they become plump and juicy, and 'ready to eat' prunes add some lovely gooiness to the Chocolate and prune muffins .  Molasses sugar is used in the recipes as it adds a nice 'depth of flavour' to the muffins  -  the more flavour something has, the more satisfying it is.

If you can use all organic ingredients then that's ideal, but if not, it's at least worth using organic chocolate to make the 'chips', as they will taste much better than ready-made choc-chips. It's also better to use organic cocoa in the Double choc-chip  and Chocolate and prune muffins.

A muffin made with wholemeal flour and good quality ingredients can be included in a balanced diet  - or you can even have two, if any other desserts that you eat on the same day are either no-fat, or very low in fat (there are suggestions for no-fat and low-fat desserts in the 'Lunch'  and 'Evening' sections of this website). However, there is no need to limit everything that you eat to low-fat versions - see the guidelines for fat (link below). Muffin recipes on other websites are sometimes claimed to be 'healthy', 'low-fat' or 'diet' muffins - but check just how much fat and 'added sugar' each muffin actually contains, compared to the recipes on this website which use ordinary ingredients to make richly-flavoured muffins. Some recipes use sugar 'substitutes', but check how much will it cost to make the muffins (and bear in mind that a sugar substitute product which claims to have 25% less calories won't result in much of a reduction on a single muffin!). There is no need to avoid 'added' sugar completely (see the guidelines for sugar - link below), unless you have been advised to do so by an NHS doctor.

Trying to lose weight when you have a 'sweet tooth' can be very stressful, but wholemeal muffins, and the other dessert suggestions on this website should help you to avoid that stress, and inspire you to create  your own nutritious desserts to include in your balanced diet.

If you're just baking muffins for yourself, it's best to halve the ingredients and just bake six at a time, which will stay fresh for the few days that it will take you to eat them...