Muffin Madness

Per Luna's request:

Dry ingredients:
400 g flour
125 g wheat bran (toasted 15 min. or so in oven)
120 g. flax meal
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking power (maybe 2.5?)
1 tsp salt
60 g dried buttermilk powder
Mix these thoroughly with a fork and set aside.

Dried fruit:
100 g blueberries
50 g cranberries
130 g dates
40 g apricots
250 g boiling water
Soak the fruit in the water; when it cools enough, cut the apricots and dates into small pieces. If the fruit isn't too dry when you start, you can cut the fruit up before adding the boiling water.

Wet ingredients:
350 g water
3 oz. butter
2 bananas or approx. 60 grams of applesauce (room temp, esp. if the bananas were frozen)
250 g honey (can sub some malted barley syrup, or even a little molasses, but probably no more than 25-50 g or it will change the flavor dramatically and will need more baking soda)
2 eggs, room temp

Set the oven to 350. Toast the wheat bran and let it cool. Soak the fruit and let it cool; cut it up as necessary. Grease two muffin tins with a little butter, plus you will need some aluminum muffin cups; you could probably make this as a quick bread as well.

Cream the butter with the paddle on your mixer; you'll want a large bowl. Add the honey and barley syrup. (To eliminate the sticky measuring cup, cream the butter, then take the bowl off the mixer and put it on the scale, adding the sugars directly.) Cream the sugars and butter together. Add the eggs one at a time. Add the bananas or applesauce. (It may break/curdle if some of your ingredients are cold.)

Add the dry ingredients and the 350 g. water, alternating (3-4 shots). Stir in the dried fruit.

Portion into muffin cups (about 2/3 full) and bake about 20 minutes. (That's an approximation--I haven't settled on exactly the right amount of time. Poke a muffin with a toothpick to test doneness.) Makes about 28 or so. (Yeah, I know, an inconvenient number.)

Obviously you can substitute in several locations, most notably in the the dried-fruit arena. I discovered the dried buttermilk a couple of months ago, and it's so much more convenient than wet, but you could do the math to use wet instead of dry and sub liquid buttermilk for the water.

As you can see, these are pretty healthy, so they make a nice breakfast, especially with a piece of fruit added. They freeze well, too. Let me know how they work for you, if you try them.