Cherry & Almond Butter Breakfast Muffins with Health Star Rating

Today, in the final part of my series on the Health Star Rating system, I'm sharing with you an easy Cherry & Almond Butter Breakfast Muffin recipe as well as a quick comparison with photos on how you can choose a product with the best Health Star Rating when shopping.

I'm sure if you've ever been to the supermarket you'll know that some products, for example like tuna, have loads of options, nearly two whole shelves top to bottom! And other products like tofu only have a couple of varieties. I find when I do my grocery shopping that the Health Star Rating system particularly helps me out when I'm comparing those things with heaps of options. 

When I went to make these muffins, I knew I had to buy almond butter and I knew that some were better than others. Some companies tend to put sugar or oil into their nut butters to make them sweeter and creamier. Given the criteria the Health Star Rating system is scored from (I mentioned this in the second part of the series here), I suspected these products would score lower or not display a rating at all. When I looked at the nut butter section, there were quite a few options but I could choose a 5-star almond butter in seconds. I then compared the ingredients with another product just to check I was making the best choice and sure enough I was. The 5-star almond butter was made only from almonds and the other almond butter had other ingredients as I had suspected. 

That was easy enough. Then I needed cherries so I looked at the canned options however they all had a low or no star rating so I decided to quickly compare them with the frozen cherries, which had a 4-star rating that I could see even before I opened the freezer door. Easy! 

I was really impressed that the way the Health Star Rating system is intended to work, actually does and is as simple as it's advertised to be! A quick glance for the star rating on the front of packets in a sea of options and your shopping trip is made healthier and much quicker! What more could you want than that? 

Now that the ingredients are sorted, I'll share my breakfast muffin recipe with you! You can also freeze these so they don't spoil before you can eat them all!

Ingredients

1 cup rolled oats, in food processor until flour (5 stars)

1/2 cup wholemeal flour

2 cups rolled oats (5 stars)

1 cup soy milk (5 stars)

3 tbs honey (1 star)

1/4 cup almond butter (5 stars)

1 cup pitted frozen cherries (4 stars)

1 egg, beaten

1 tbs extra virgin olive oil

2 tsp baking powder

Method

Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius (fan-forced)

Place all dry ingredients into a bowl and combine well

Add all remaining ingredients and combine until just mixed, don't over work it

Spoon batter into non-stick muffin pans until they are 3/4 of the way full

Bake for 12-15 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean

This post is in partnership with, and sponsored by Health Star Rating. You can read more about the system here - http://bit.ly/2kPcIQp