Date & Orange Muffins

I've modified recipes slightly before, but this week was a lot more than I've done in the past. It all started with a recipe from the WeightWatchers magazine, for date and orange muffins. However, that recipe called for use of one of their toffee yogurts, and I wasn't going to use that. They're probably full of artificial sweeteners and thickeners and all sorts of stuff, which may have its place, but that place is not in my baking. Normally I'd just substitute an equivalent, but I figured any other fat-free toffee yogurt would suffer from the same issues. So, I started looking round for other recipes. Why not just pick something different to bake? Well, I don't recall using dates before, so I wanted to try something with them.
Anyway, after a bit of looking around and not coming up with anything, I figured why not just try some more extensive modification than usual? So I did. And here's what I came up with. There isn't quite as much flavour to them as I'd like, but they're certainly acceptable. I'm sure that upping the maple syrup (I didn't actually have the full tablespoonful left in my bottle, and if making them again I'd probably double the amount), and the orange would help matters.

Recipe:
200 grams plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
50 grams dark muscovado sugar
50 grams pitted dates, chopped
100 millilitres skim milk
120 grams yoghurt (use a toffee one if you like)
1 egg
30 millilitres sunflower oil
Zest of 1 orange
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 tablespoon orange juice

Preheat oven to 180C. Put 10 (8 if you want them bigger) muffin cases into a muffin tray.
Sift together the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda in a large bowl.
Mix in the sugar.
Whisk together the milk, yoghurt, egg, sunflower oil, maple syrup, orange juice and orange zest.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and stir very briefly.
Sprinkle the chopped dates into the mixture. Stir very lightly and briefly until ingredients are combined.
Spoon into the muffin cases.
Bake for about 20 minutes until the muffins are risen, golden and firm to the touch.