Remember the Boxed Brownies vs. Homemade Brownies experiment I did? And the Boxed Mac and Cheese vs. Homemade Creamy Mac and Cheese experiment I did? How about my Sunday Dinner Challenge, which took a whopping one minute, forty eight point nine seconds to make? My boys love that I keep making them bring the stop watch into the kitchen for these “races”. It’s that male competition thing they have going on. 

I finally got around to completing another “boxed vs. homemade” experiment in an effort to prove that making homemade food from healthy ingredients doesn’t take a lot of time. I figure that some might still be having a difficult time believing me when I say that it truly doesn’t take a long time to prepare healthy foods. So I’m having fun trying to “prove” my case, and my family is having fun eating the results of my experiments. ;)

This time, I decided to see which took longer to prepare: boxed muffins…or muffins made from scratch. I found some great looking “healthier” boxed muffin mixes from Vitacost. While these were organic, they were still made from white flour and white sugar, although at least I could control the oil I put into them. None of that has anything to do with the experiment necessarily, except just to say that these muffins really didn’t hold much in the way of nutrition. Anyway, back to the point, which I know that those of you who haven’t fallen asleep while reading this post are waiting on pins and needles to hear… 

From the time I opened the boxes, to the time I put the muffin pans into the oven, 6.25 minutes had passed. 

A few weeks later, I mixed up my Applesauce Bread recipe and made the batter into muffins. How long did it take? Right at 7 minutes.  And these had whole wheat flour, honey, and real, unsweetened applesauce in them. Nutrients! For my family for breakfast! What a concept.  This, because I spent about 45 seconds longer making muffins from scratch. 

What other thoughts do you have about what I could experiment with?  My boys are waiting with their stop watch…