My sister Amy doesn’t care for nuts and raisins in her baked goods. As she once put it, “What’s this debris doing in my food?” If she were in The Cities now, I’d put this muffin to the test to see if it could persuade her to come over to the other side. It’s a variation on the recipe for bran muffins in The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. Fresh out of the oven these were dense and moist with the crunchy top that makes a muffin a muffin. I took a chance and cut the refined sugar completely. I liked it. But if you have a serious sweet tooth, you might miss it.

The Recipe

In a small saucepan on low heat, melt

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

In medium bowl, soak for at least 10 minutes:

1 cup of unprocessed wheat bran

with

1 ¼ cups of buttermilk *

In the measuring cup you just used for the buttermilk, crack

1 egg

Set the egg aside in the refrigerator so that Bert doesn’t get any big ideas about jumping on the counter and licking it.

Grate and set aside

3 large carrots (a little more than 1 cup)

Chop

Almonds, pecans or walnuts to make about 1 ¼ cups

To the nuts you just chopped, add and set aside

¼ cup sunflower seeds

Check your butter. If it’s done melting, turn off the burner.

In the meantime, in a larger bowl whisk:

2 cups whole wheat flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoons cinnamon

Is the butter melted? Good. Turn off the burner and let it cool.

To the bran-buttermilk mixture mix in

1 cup raisins

1 cup unsweetened applesauce

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

<¼ cup honey, maybe ⅛?

The cooled but still melted butter

The egg from the fridge

The grated carrots

The nuts

Fold together the bran-buttermilk mixture (with the debris) with the flour and other dry ingredients. Scoop batter into well-greased muffin tins. Bake at 375˚ for 20-25 minutes.

* Buttermilk substitute

In general, add 1 TBS lemon juice to measuring cup. Fill with milk to make 1 C.

For the 1 ¼ cups of buttermilk in this recipe, add 1 TBS + ¾ TSP of lemon juice to measuring cup and fill with milk to make 1 ¼ cups.

For a double batch, add 2 TBS + 1 ½ TSP of lemon juice to measuring cup and fill with milk to make 2 ½ cups.

Alternatives

The original recipe uses white flour. In one test, I used half white and half wheat. I thought 100% wheat worked fine. It also called for molasses, which I replaced with honey because that’s what I had. I also didn’t measure it, because that’s just another dish to wash. Let’s call it ⅛ cup. Also, in the version here, I replaced the brown sugar called for in the original recipe with grated carrots. I was somewhat worried about the water content of the carrots, but decided not to drain them. In a previous test, I added 1 cup of chopped pecans (no sunflowers added). That was good. Here the combination of almonds and sunflowers worked. Again, it’s what was around. A version with coconut flakes would probably be good. I tested a cookie version of this. That seemed to work. It’s like having the top of the muffin without the bottom. I’m still curious to know if you could put this in a bunt pan for something pretty.

Nutrition

Here’s the nutrition information according to VeryWellFit.com.

Compare that to the original recipe with the white flour, molasses, brown sugar and without the nuts:

Here’s how these bran muffin recipes compare to a Lemon-blueberry muffin from the same cookbook:

The Lemon-blueberry muffins include 3 cups of white flour, 1 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, low-fat yogurt, 2 eggs, 8 tablespoons of butter, lemon zest and 1 cup of blueberries.

In the end, though I do love this recipe, I doubt this is the kind of “gateway debris” that might convince someone who has always hated raisins to give them another try.