Fruity Bran Muffins |
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| March, 1999 |
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The only fruit in the original version of this recipe was 3/4 cup of raisins. Variations started with having leftover dried fruit peel, cherries, from Christmas which I wanted to use. Then I didn't have buttermilk on hand and used powdered buttermilk. Reconstituted buttermilk from powder had a thinner consistency than commercial buttermilk. Since one year I had an abundance of peaches that I needed to use and I blended them and substituted the blended fruit for some of the buttermilk. These fruity muffins evolved. |
| 3 1 1 . . 2 1/3 3/4 2 2 1/2 1 1 1/3 2 1 |
cups shreds of wheat bran cereal cup boiling water cup dried fruit (raisins, cranberries, chopped dates, chopped apricots, apples, candied Christmas fruit, whatever you have available) cups all-purpose flour cup sugar tsp baking soda tsp baking powder tsp salt cup nonfat buttermilk cup blended fruit cup vegetable oil eggs cup chopped nuts |
These
muffins freeze well. They can be heated in the microwave or packed
frozen in a lunch bag. They are so substantial -- almost akin to fruitcake -- so you don't want them large. A small muffin will satisfy mid-morning or mid-afternoon hunger attacks. |
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Combine first 3 ingredients in a large bowl; stir well. Cover and let stand 10 minutes. Combine flour and next 3 ingredients in a large bowl, and stir well; make a well in the center of this dry mixture. Using a one quart pitcher bowl reconstitute 1 cup buttermilk from buttermilk powder. Add blended fruit to make a total of 2 cups buttermilk/fruit mixture. (If you don't have that much fruit, make it up with buttermilk so you have 2 cups of liquid. You can even use all buttermilk, which is the way the original recipe appeared in Prevention.) Add the eggs and oil to the fruit/buttermilk mixture and stir well. Combine the buttermilk and cereal mixtures and pour into the well of dry ingredients, stirring just until dry ingredients are moistened. Stir in the chopped nuts. Divide batter evenly among muffin pans greased well with margarine. Bake at 350 degrees for 22 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out more or less clean. Remove from pans immediately. Yield: more than 2 dozen muffins. |
If the
fruit (either dried or blended) I am using is naturally tart, I increase
the sugar to 1 cup. Buttermilk is not easily available in Mexico, so I bring buttermilk powder from the states and use it in all my recipes which call for buttermilk. The fruit can be blended fresh, frozen, or even canned fruit. For the chopped nuts I prefer walnuts of pecans, although I suppose that almost any chopped nuts would work. |
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Notes: I have a stock of square freezer containers and my freezer usually contains a wealth of ingredients. Whenever I have extra fruit at its peak of flavor, I freeze it rather than let it go bad. This might be canned fruit, or fresh. When bananas are at the point of "need to be used", I'll peel them, put into a freezer container, and freeze them. They get dark, but they taste good. Pineapple -- peel, chop coarsely and freeze. Mango -- peel, pit, freeze. That's the idea. I don't blend fruit before freezing because the air that is whipped into it during the blending process seems to shorten the freezer life of the fruit and sometimes makes it turn dark. When I don't have fresh fruit that I want to use in the muffins, I take some from the freezer. |
This
recipe was originally presented as a way to have freshly baked muffins
each morning by keeping the batter in the refrigerator for up to a week. I haven't done that since I didn't like the idea of keeping egg batter that long. I prefer to heat the oven only once and bake the whole batch. Then I freeze the muffins and heat in the morning as desired. |
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Microwave Conversions: Place 2 paper cupcake liners in each muffin cup of a microwave-safe muffin pan. Spoon 1/4 cup batter into each set of cupcake liners. You can use glass ucstard cups instead of a muffin pan. For 6 muffins: Microwave muffins at HIGH 3 1/2 to 4 minutes or until tops are only slightly wet, rotating pan a half-turn after 2 minutes. For 2 muffins: Microwave at HIGH 1 minute 30 seconds to 1 minute 45 seconds or until tops are only slightly wet, rotating pan a half-turn after 30 seconds. Remove from pan immediately; remove outer cupcake liner from each muffin. Let stand 2 minutes on a wire rack. |
These microwave instructions were included in the Prevention article. I have never tried baking the muffins in the microwave. I don't know how all that fruit would work. However, if you use all buttermilk, and only raisins for the dried fruit, it might be worth a try. | |||||
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