I’m hooked! I love baking muffins. Who’da thunk! I made bran muffins on Saturday.

On Sunday, I did a little experimenting. I started with a plain muffin recipe and then in each muffin i added different special ingredients or a combination of them.

The special ingredients were dried cranberries, cherries, bananas, chocolate chips. I think I like the ones with cherries in them the best. But, the banana and chocolate chip one is delish too!

I got the recipes from The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook by Diana Shaw. I’ve had this cookbook for years and years, close to fourteen years! But, I’m finally really starting to love it! I think my cupboards have matured with my age, when I was younger I never had nor heard of half of the spices she uses.

Now that I’m revisiting the book, I’m finding I appreciate the little things she does. For each recipe, she includes the nutritional information, the calories per serving, the protein, carbs, ect. Another great thing, is she says how long each recipe takes to make, including total time, prep time and cooking time. All very helpful! Especially when I have a limited amount of time to make dinner. The only thing I miss are photos. I love to see what the food I might make has the potential to look like. And it’s just fun to look at food photos!

Here’s the recipe for the best bran muffins!

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups wheat bran
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
2 large egg whites
1 cup nonfat buttermilk or plain nonfat yogurt

Heat oven to 500. Combine the flour baking soda, baking powder, salt and wheat bran in a bowl. Beat together the brown sugar, molasses, egg whites and buttermilk. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Just stir till moisten. (try not to stir too much, this will make the muffins lighter and fluffier.) Here is where I added dried cranberries, you can add whatever goodness you want!
Get your muffin tin and fill each cup not quite all the way full. When you put the tin in the oven, turn the heat down to 400. She says to bake them for 35 minutes, but in my oven, it only took twenty. Each muffin has 164 calories, 8 grams of protein, one gram of fat. Enjoy! Let me know what your favorite special ingredients are!