Evanne Schmarder: There isn’t anything better for breakfast than a fresh healthy bran muffin and a delicious cup of coffee. Not being much of a baker, I’d gotten into the habit of picking up a few muffins when I went grocery shopping. It got a little bit spendy, but I was comfortable knowing that I was eating “healthy.” Then, one day, my grocery store began posting nutritional information including the calorie counts on the flavor labels. I’ve got to tell you I was absolutely shocked to learn that my morning muffin had nearly one-third of my entire day’s calorie allowance. Wow, that is just not good.

So with a little research, recipe testing and tweaking, I came up with my own simple and delicious version. of my beloved morning bran muffins. These are filled with raisins, nuts, a natural sweetener, wholesome oat bran, and more deliciousness. But even better, they’re fast to bake, so my muffins are now warm in the morning. Let me show you how easy these are to make. You’ll be making them in no time. While it might seem like there are quite a few ingredients, you’ll see how easy it is.

Now, the way that we start these muffins is we’ve got two bowls: one for the dry ingredients and one for the wet ingredients. So first, we’ll mix up the dry ingredients. In this bowl, I have 1/2 a cup of whole wheat flour. To that, I’m gonna add 1/2 a cup of oat bran right in like so. I’m gonna add 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Now I’m gonna add just a little bit of spice mix. This is cinnamon, flaxseed, lemon, ginger, really delicious.  I’m gonna add a couple of heaping 1/2 a teaspoon, so that’s almost a teaspoon. We’re gonna add some baking powder and that’s gonna give it just a little bit of lift. We’re gonna put 1 1/2 teaspoons, 2, 3.  Perfect, just like that, and we’re gonna mix everything around. That’s it. Our dry ingredients are done and ready to go.

Now for our wet ingredients. I’ve got 1/2 a cup of nonfat milk in my bowl. I’ve got 1/4 cup of Grade B maple syrup. You can also use honey or agave, whatever your sweetener of choice is. Just a nice natural sweetener like so. I’m gonna put in some avocado oil and. I’m gonna put in 1 1/2 tablespoons. Avocado oil is healthy for you, it’s delicious, and if you’re actually cooking with it, it has a really high smoke point so I always have a bottle of avocado oil in my pantry. And one egg. The last wet ingredient we’re gonna put in is some vanilla. I’ll put about a tablespoon in. Just adds some extra flavor. Mix that into our liquid.

Now what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna combine the liquid into the dry ingredients.  Really easy, gonna just pour it right in like so, and I’m gonna stir it around. You really just wanna stir it until all the dry ingredients are wet.  If you stir it a lot, it gets a little bit tough, so just mix everything up just barely. The last thing we’re gonna do is we’re gonna put in our walnuts and our raisins. I’m gonna use a spatula and I’m gonna just fold them in. And that’s about it.

Now we’re gonna put our muffin batter into our muffin pans. Now, if you have a loaf pan, you can certainly use that. I’ve done that in the past, but I picked up this little muffin pan. It’s nonstick. I’ve put a little bit of oil in it just because I wanna grease it. I want my muffins to come out nice when they’re done cooking. And it fits in my toaster oven. By the way, I’ve got my toaster oven right here, preheating to about 375 degrees on convection. So what we wanna do is we’re gonna put our muffin batter into our muffin pan. We’re gonna fill it about 2/3 of the way. Here we go. Pretty simple.

Before we put them in the oven, the last thing we’re gonna do is just sprinkle a little bit of coconut sugar on the top of the muffins. It gives them just a nice sticky, sort of sweet, topping. Really easy and not a lot. Just a little bit. All right, and that’s all there is to it. Now we’re ready to put our muffins into our toaster oven. We have it on 375 degrees convection. These are gonna cook somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes, so let’s get ’em going. Evanne: Well, that’s all there is to it. Measure, mix, bake, and enjoy.

I’m pleased to tell you that these have around 200-ish calories each, less than half of the store-bought muffins.  Try this recipe at home, put your own spin on it by adding your favorite fruit, nuts, or even switch up the sweetener.That’ll do it from this humble road abode. Thanks for visiting, and we’ll see you next time. Cheers.