Blueberry bran muffins, no waiting

The original recipe was accompanied with a photo of pints of blueberries. I can kind of see why. They aren't the lookiest.

I found this recipe after originally intending to bake another. I’d bought wheat bran and fresh blueberries to make a recipe in the paper, only to read it more carefully and then bounce off. It was going to take up to 45 minutes of baking time for muffins (?!), and muffins that were reduced-sugar and bran-filled at that. I’ll wait 45 minutes in the morning only for something super delicious and decadent. But since I had an entire package of bran to use, I turned to the Internet, and the ever-reliable Ina Garten for this recipe, which bakes in a normal amount of time for muffins.

Blueberry bran muffins

Adapted from the Barefoot Contessa

Ingredients

1 cup flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon cinnamon

7 ounces Greek yogurt (I used a 5.3 ounce container of vanilla Greek yogurt and a heaping tablespoon of sour cream to make up the difference)

½ cup sugar

½ cup baking oil

½ cup honey

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla

2½ cup wheat bran

1½ cups fresh blueberries

Method

Preheat oven to 350. Line muffin tins with paper liners or butter the cups.

Mix dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Mix yogurt, sugar, oil, honey, eggs and vanilla in a large bowl. Stir in dry ingredients until just incorporated, then do the same with the wheat bran. Fold in blueberries.

Scoop batter into prepared muffin tin. (The recipe called for using a rounded 2¼ inch ice cream scoop, which I do not own. I can tell you that if you divide the batter evenly among 12 muffin cups, you will have muffin cups filled pretty much to the brim or a bit beyond, whichever measuring device you use.) Bake for 22 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the muffins are golden brown (although really, they’re bran muffins; they start out life golden brown). Let stand for 5 minutes before serving.

Rating: Definitely a good Sunday morning breakfast candidate. Eminently inhaleable, despite being bran muffins, and well worth waiting the limited amount of time for. While possibly more healthful than some other varieties, they don’t have that dry health-food taste. Dave scarfed four of them, which possibly defeats the healthy nature of them, but he’ll run it off. They’re fast to fix, and as an added bonus for the brain geeks out there, the recipe is super easy to remember with four dry ingredients that use a ½ teaspoon and two that go into the wet that use a ½ cup. I’ve got an apple-oatmeal coffeecake recipe like that; memorable recipes appeal to those of us who want to go on autopilot on a Sunday morning and not be slowed down by having to check a recipe. 

I appreciated something warm at breakfast, because we lost our spring overnight after a string of nice days. But I know spring is on the way sometime, and so are the birds. Check out this map of migrating humming birds.