What do you think when you hear the phrase Bran Muffin? Yeah, that's what I thought. Now, imagine two things 1) banana and 2) nutella. Have I got your attention yet? Oh yeah, and what if I told you next that they're still healthy (no butter and very little oil).
The funny thing about bran muffins is that the one single muffin I remember from my young childhood was Timmy's Oat Bran Date & Orange Muffin. I was probably only 5 or so but I recall that being my go to muffin when everyone went for coffee. I don't know now if I liked that taste of it, or just the name, but it's still pretty ironic that I liked bran as a 5 year old and then wouldn't touch it for many years after. I think it has always been that bran muffins always seem to have nuts or raisins in them, and I'm not found of raisins. Anyway, this recipe has not sign of raisins, or any other stereotypical bran muffin add in for that matter.
Okay, so these are the bran muffins that I most definitely will be adding to my make again muffin collection. They are great. They're moist and wonderful and have a hint of healthiness mixed in with a side of nutella. Unfortunately, nutella has dairy in it and so I halved this recipe (and still got 9 fair sized muffins) and made another type of dairy free muffins for the lactose intolerant among us. Next time, I might make the full batch but split it and add peanut butter to half and nutella to the rest, to save me having to make two batches one after the other. There's nothing worse than having to wash bowls you just used, to then go and dirty them again. The other thing I did for this recipe was I substituted some whole wheat flour for all purpose. Usually I split it and do half and half, but for this recipe I did 1 C. Whole Wheat Flour and 1/2 C. All Purpose. Eventually I'm trying to completely eliminate all purpose flour, but I don't want to make a complete swap right away on a recipe, because of the weight difference between the two flours. I'm also just realizing now as I type this that I swapped out the buttermilk for some vanilla soy milk with a bit of lemon juice added in to make it buttermilk-like. Oops, I guess I'm so used to not cooking with dairy milk, that even when other ingredients aren't dairy free, I still reach for the soy milk. Ha! I didn't even realize I did that until just now, some 4 days after the fact. I won't keep you from this recipe any longer.
Recipe from Baking Bites.
Ingredients
Makes 18 muffins
1 1/2 C. All Purpose Flour (or a combination of whole wheat and all purpose-see above comment)
1 C. Oat Bran or Quick-Cooking Oatmeal
1 Tbsp. Cocoa
1 Tsp. Baking Powder
1/2 Tsp. Baking Soda
1/2 Tsp. Salt
2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil.
3/4 C. Brown Sugar
2 Large Eggs
1 Tsp. Vanilla
1 C. Mashed Banana (about 2 bananas)
6 Tbsp. Nutella
1 C. Buttermilk
additional Nutella for topping
Directions
~Preheat oven to 375 F.
~Line muffin tins with liners or grease
~In a large bowl, combine flour, bran, cocoa, baking powder, soda and salt. Whisk to combine.
~In a medium bowl, whisk together oil, sugar, eggs, banana, nutella and buttermilk until smooth.
~Poor wet mixture into dry, and stir until just combined.
~Fill each muffin tin.
~Drop 1-2 tsp of nutella onto top of each muffin and swirl around with a toothpick (this didn't work so well for me. It really just clumped, but don't worry it ended up looking fine and still tasting good.)
~Bake until toothpick comes out clean from centre of muffin. Approximately 13-15 minutes.
~Cool muffins in tin slightly then remove to cool completely on a rack.
Enjoy
Oh yeah, I'm kind of happy with how these pictures turned out for once.
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