Bran Muffins

Taste and texture…excellent! Appearance…..not so much. These were so light, moist, and delicious, I forgot I was eating a bran muffin. However, every muffin had a crater in the centre.

I was meticulous in weighing all of the ingredients (including baking soda and powder) - and there are a lot of them - but I did make some substitutions: I used regular instead of toasted bran and germ, orange flower instead of clover honey, and fancy molasses instead of blackstrap. I also made 12 regular muffins instead of 6 jumbo. Craters are often a sign of over-leavening…..were the honey and molasses I used that much lower in acid content than the original ingredients that there was too much soda? Or was it the change in muffin size?

I liked these enough that I’ll make them again but I’ll have to find a substitute for the 28g of poached pear (~1/8 of a whole)….I included it this time as I had leftover from a dessert I made, but it’s not something I would normally have.

The authors recommend you start with something easy before progressing to more challenging recipes in this book…..if I can’t even make a muffin, then I’m in big trouble ;!