Bran Muffins

If you haven’t already guessed, I tend to find lessons in simple everyday things. I  don’t believe that everything has to be disaster to be significant.  And so it is with today’s post on bran muffins.

As you may recall, I had been on a quest to come up with a simple breakfast that I could eat in the car.  Muffins were the perfect solution, but the store bought ones were loaded with both calories and sugar.  Two things that I was trying to avoid in my efforts to move ever closer to health.

I came across a simple low sugar bran muffin recipe and the results were pretty good.  As I continued to make batch after batch I became over confident with my baking technique and muffin quality suffered.  My last batch was edible, but the muffins were slightly gummy and very uninspiring. I ate them, but I didn’t enjoy them.

Back to the drawing board.  What did I do to fix the problem?  When the recipe called for soaking the bran cereal for 15 minutes I soaked it for 15 minutes, not the 5 seconds that I did last time.  When the recipe called for a cup and a half of this, or a tablespoon of that, I used real measuring utensils, instead of “eyeballing” it.  I even checked to see if the muffins were done by inserting a toothpick!

The result?  My best effort yet!  Even my wife Julie commented that they were delicious.

Today my goal is to realize that there is no substitute for doing things the right way when making muffins , or for that matter in life.