Date Bran Muffins

These are a fantastic and a creative take on bran muffins.

There are equal parts flour and wheat bran in this recipe.

Don’t let that fool you into thinking these are super healthy, however.  There’s a fair amount of butter and sugar involved too.

Additional ingredients include sour cream, molasses, eggs, and orange zest.

Oh, and dates.  I swear, dates are the most unappealing things to look at.  Just gnarly, really.

They look better chopped up, but still rather unappealing.

A mixer is used to cream the butter and sugar and beat in the eggs but the rest of the ingredients are folded in by hand.  Getting my eggs to mix in with the butter/sugar was a nightmare and never really worked.  Consequently, I had blobs of butter/sugar near the end.  I think the muffins would have turned out a little airier if I add the eggs after the rest of the wet ingredients have been mixed in, maybe even after the dry ingredients (like it’s done with the Banana Bread).

Whenever a recipe instructs me to “generously butter a muffin pan,” I take the “generously” part very seriously.  I almost always use muffin papers, because there is nothing worse than scrubbing crusty muffin pans, but I followed the MSBH’s lead and just used butter.  A generous amount of butter.

And then I scooped in the muffin batter.  It was really easy to work with.

And they baked up great and I had no problems getting them out of the pan.  I did reduce the baking soda a bit (for altitude) and added a few tablespoons of extra flour (again, for altitude).  Some were more peaked than others, but overall I’m happy with how they look.

The orange zest really comes through and it’s an key addition.  The muffin itself is very moist, although a little too dense, I think.  Granted, bran muffins tend to be dense.  The dates soften considerably and taste really good in the earthy, orange-y muffin.

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