Blue Sky Bakery Bran Muffins; fuel for insane schedules.

I’m on a ‘what-to-eat-for-breakfast kick lately. Its my schedule. I’m not whining. I love being busy but lately my busy has morphed into insane. We’re preparing to sell Carmarthen St., renovations start Monday on another space, its time to spring clean the farm, just finished developing a new menu and the recipes for a local restaurant, taught a blogging workshop last week and my May cooking workshops start Wednesday. It’s all good as long as I remember to eat well.

When I overload my work schedule, I save time by eating junk food on the fly. Empty cardboard coffee cups and all manner of drive through food wrappers fill my garbage cans. What ends up happening isn’t pretty. I crash. My body revolts. Fatigue, headaches and lack of energy leave me blaming my workload instead the true culprit; over processed fast food.

My solve is to find ‘fast’ healthy food. Muffins are obvious but are often loaded with sugar and fat. After a web search for a super-muffin, I found this recipe for BLUE SKY BAKERY BRAN MUFFINS on the Smitten Kitchen site. Author Deb Perleman found the recipe on Sweetie the Kitchen Blog who found it here: “Table of Contents: From Breakfast with Anita Diamant to Dessert with James Patterson.

Its Sunday morning. When I started to pull the ingredients from my cupboard, I discovered that I’m out of wheat bran. Deb Perleman suggested pulsing up oatmeal in a food processor as a good alternative. Worked like a charm! Also, don’t be alarmed when your batter starts to swell. It’s the sour cream reacting with the baking soda.

Beyond my pile of first world problems, our family is praying for the speedy and safe return of our daughter, Sara’s partner Josh, who was deployed last week to Nepal. Hearing the mixture of pride and worry in Sara’s voice, as she explained what was happening left me feeling helpless to comfort her. The deployment was immediate with vague length of stay details. His ability to communicate with home will be limited. Sara passed on Josh’s wished to us, “It’s my job. It’s what I specialize in. I need you to be positive.”

And so we will be Josh, until you’re safely back in Sara’s arms.

BLUE SKY BAKERY BRAN MUFFINS – altered ever so slightly
Makes 12 standard muffins

1 cup sour cream
1/3 cup milk
1 egg
1/3 cup sunflower oil
¼ cup packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1½ cups wheat bran – I used oatmeal whizzed in a food processor
1 cup all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1½ teaspoons baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons granulated sugar, divided
1 cup chopped mixed fruit – I used frozen whole raspberries

THE STEPS:

• Heat oven to 425 F
• Spray muffin tin with a non-stick spray. Set aside.
• In a large bowl, whisk bran, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt – set aside.
• In a medium bowl, whisk buttermilk, egg, oil, brown sugar and vanilla until well combined.
• Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients and gently mix, by hand, until all the flour is off the bottom of the bowl and no big pockets of flour remain. The batter will be thick and a little lumpy.

• Spoon 2 tablespoons of the batter into prepared muffin tins.
• Add 2 teaspoons of fruit, with a pinch of sugar

• Top with the remaining batter.
• Sprinkle with remaining sugar.
• Bake at 425*F degrees for 5 minutes.
• Keep the muffins in the oven, reduce oven temperature to 375*F and continue to bake for 15-20 minutes until tops are lightly golden. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean.
• Allow muffins to cool for 10 minutes.
• Store muffins at room temperature in an airtight container.

THE LOVE: BLUE SKY BAKERY BRAN MUFFINS keep for 3 days at room temperature, three months in the freezer.

Thanks for reading.