Yesterday I saw a recipe for honey muffins on Taste of Home, a wonderful cooking and baking site. I’m on a low-sodium diet, so I checked out the sodium content in the original recipe and saw it was 242 mg – much too high for one muffin for someone like me.

Fortunately, my Aunt Liz sent me some reduced sodium baking powder last week, and I was able to use that to cut down on the sodium in a big way. My muffins have 93 mg each, and I also mixed in some vanilla extract, orange extract, and orange zest into the batter to turn these into honey orange muffins. The end result is not only lower in sodium, but also very tasty. Next time, I might add some chopped pecans to the batter and drizzle on an orange icing once the muffins have cooled.

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 teaspoons baking powder*
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 egg
• 1 cup milk
• 4 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon orange extract (or orange juice)
• zest of half a medium orange

*Rumford makes reduced sodium baking powder; you can find it online.

Preparation

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line muffin tins with paper liners; this recipe made 17 muffins for me.

In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

In a large glass measuring cup, combine egg, milk, melted butter, honey, vanilla extract, orange extract, and orange zest. Beat with a fork to combine.

Pour wet mixture into dry mixture and stir until just combined; batter should be lumpy. Using a 2-inch cookie scoop, drop scoops of batter into prepared pans, filling each well about 3/4 full.

Bake for 12-15 minutes, until tops are light golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean.

Store in an airtight container for 3-4 days, or freeze cooled muffins for future breakfasts and snacks.