I made them!! I totally spaced out and forgot the oil, so they are a teensy bit on the gummy side--but great flavor!! yogurt was just fine--I used 1/2 tsp. cinnamon as we really like it. I might use even more next time.. also--no walnuts so I threw in some crushed up slivered almonds I had--nice bit of crunch.. thanks for the recipe Emily!

Kate, here is another recipe I can highly recommend. Home Cookin Chapter: Recipes From Thibeault's Table Cream Cheese filled White Chocolate Muffins =========================================== Adapted from Couture Cupcakes- ecupcake.blogspot.com The original recipe called for 4 ounces of white chocolate. I only had two. And like most cupcakes the original one was frosted. Instead I drizzled an icing sugar glaze flavoured with butter and vanilla over the warm cupcake. I also placed a large spoonful of the cream cheese filling in the centre. Definitely a keeper. 2 cups all purpose flour 1 2/3 cups of white sugar 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 ounces quality white chocolate 1/2 butter 1/2 cup water 1 cup of sour cream 2 teaspoons vanilla 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 2 eggs Oven preheated to 350°F Melt chocolate with butter. Stir until smooth. Add water. Mix together flour,sugar, salt and baking soda. Mix together sour cream, vanilla and eggs, add butter chocolate mixture and flour. Beat with either a machine or hand mixer. Pour into muffin tin lined with paper cupcake liners. Option: 1 package cream cheese (8 ounces) 1/2 cup sugar 1 egg vanilla pinch of salt Beat together cream cheese, egg, sugar, salt and vanilla. Fill muffin cups half full with muffin batter, top with a spoon of cream cheese and then cover with more muffin batter. When muffins come out of the oven drizzle with glaze made with one tablespoon melted butter, one cup of powdered sugar, vanilla and a little cream or milk.

This is a recipe I picked up from the South Beach Diet forum. Baked Oat meal 1/2 cup olive oil 2/3 cup splenda (I think Splenda is bitter so I use Wheylow) 2 eggs 3 cups dry oatmeal 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup fat free milk 1 teaspoon vanilla 1 teaspoon baking powder Wisk oil, splenda, and eggs. Add cinn, baking powder, salt, vanila and wisk again. Add oatmeal then milk and mix. Spray 9X9 cooking pan with non-stick spray. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes. Serving size 1/2 cup. VERY YUMMY! Variation: 1/4 c canola oil and 1/4c unsweetened applesauce, and 1/2c skim milk and 1/2c of plain yogurt. I did use 2 eggs. I think my glass baking dish is 8x8, and I baked it @350 for 30 mins. I think I could have baked it even longer to get 'crispier', but it came out great as is. small variation (not that this excellent recipe needs it) however since i have a piece of this daily it's nice to mix it up now again. I omit the cinnamon add 1/2 of blueberries, substitute the olive oil for 1 cup of apple sauce (I have those individual cup apple sauce on hand and use one whole one, i think its a cup. I have added a tablespoon of canola oil as well sometimes 2. Whey low brown sugar sprinked on top is nice too. Blueberries are in season and really go well with oatmeal. I make this recipe weekly and use it as a tote-able snack. Here's a link to the Wheylow site. Meg :) Here is a link that might be useful: Wheylow Sugar Substitute

Oh! Well, you got the answer for the oil question. It sounds like you had a good result. So, on that theme, I have a few touchpoints. I learned to make cakes out of whatever, when they were the only sweets we had (muffins structurally being cakes). Sometimes, the only fat I had was oil, but I wasn’t using recipes. The rule is if it looks like cake batter, tastes like cake batter, and you didn't forget to put in some baking powder, it's a cake. So with whichever fat, one adjusted as needed. I might put in an extra egg for the water, richness (it was low viscosity cooking oil, not olive) and structure (glue). Muffins, being smaller and weighing less are more tolerant. Early in my time having to do all the Passover cooking by myself, I learned that the kind of fat doesn't matter for the structure in the matzah balls. I think it was Cloudswift who explained that the relative amount of fat was small enough that it just didn't make a difference if it was a couple tablespoons of schmaltz or oil, making vegan easy (though the flavor part requires adjustment). Of course, with dumplings of any kind, the biggest difference is in how they're cooked, whether they become fluffy or leaden or chewy. A group of us were making cookies en masse for a fundraiser, and when we ran out of solid fat, one of the gals subbed oil in a couple of recipes. They ran all over the pans in puddles. If they'd been contained, like in a muffin pan, they might have been okay, but there was nothing to hold them together on sheet pans. Drop cookies are meant to spread and flatten as the fat melts, but with oil, which is already liquid, they just spread and spread. Cut cookies are drier and not supposed to spread, though eggs and/or baking powder will make them puff, which means they get a little bigger sideways, too. They set their shapes pretty quickly, before the fat melts. Oil substitute (there may be recipes developed using oil that work better), while better than in drop cookies, again, spreads too fast for the shapes to set. In enriched breads, for the most part, it's like the matzah balls--too small a percentage to make much difference. I prefer solid vegetable shortening (which I usually hate) or baking sticks (“vegan butter”). Butter in the same proportion is too rich and makes the crumb heavy, and almost greasy-seaming. I'm sure that could be adjusted. I've only used olive oil in pizza crust, but EVOO (in quantity similar to enriched bread, not a spoonful) does give the kind of butteriness you spoke of, without being heavy,. For regular breads, lighter oil works fine, but one uses less. Since the liquid in bread is adjusted by feel, depending on how damp the flour (and air) are, I don't know if there's a specific compensation. Many enriched bread recipes call for oil to begin with. One could check the proportions in a few to make a good estimate of how much to substitute for solid fat. I recently made a recipe that called for oil, where I thought the crumb could be more tender, but I think the recipe was meant to be easy to remember, with no fractions, rather than optimized for the best loaf. I hope some of this is what you were looking for. Happy New Year.