Tag Archives: blueberry

Molasses Blueberry Bran Muffins

Well, this week certainly put me through my paces. (Oh, you too? TGIF.) It’s a good thing I have whole wheat molasses blueberry bran muffins for breakfast…I mean, it’s a really good thing.

What’s even sweeter is the fact that they were made with blueberries harvested with a dear friend at a “secret” blueberry farm. And to cinch it all together: these muffins have no refined sugar, but taste like you’re sort of getting away with something when you bite into them before 9 am.

What’s not to love about that?

If you’ve been following with the blog, you have probably gathered that I pretty much always have sweets in the house. When I’m halfway through one baked treat, it’s time to dream up the next one. (As I pen this, there is half of a loaf of bread pudding perched in my fridge, screaming to be eaten…I must remind myself, “adults” eat dinner then dessert…)

So it came as no surprise that I felt compelled (and I absolutely mean compelled) to try my hand at bran muffins this week, like, STAT. I guess I just couldn’t handle looking at the bag of Bob’s Red Mill wheat bran which has been staring me in the face for the last month, hinting ever so subtly that I should, ahem, make it into something delicious and vaguely nutritious already!

Thus, I plucked it from the shelf and did a little internet rummaging. (“How can I recreate those totally spectacular blueberry bran muffins featured at that coffee roaster in Portland?”)

With just a little digging, I found an approximation that brought me one step closer to that goal.

Healthy Molasses Blueberry Bran Muffins (Sugar-Free!)

Adapted from this recipe from Food52, this muffin batter creates the perfect backdrop for whatever seasonal fruit, seeds, shredded vegetables or coconut you wish to spotlight. It’s simple to put together, with little mess. They taste like a treat but they’re sort of, like, a superfood or something…at least, that’s what I’m telling myself.

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that bright orange stuff is mashed baked sweet potato, but applesauce would work great here too!

Like many recipes in baking, the ingredients were placed in “wet” and “dry” bowls respectively, making for simple assembly and easy clean up.

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here i am infusing these muffins with the last of summer’s sun…let steep for a few minutes in direct light for best results 🙂

Mix it all together…

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i mean, that color just says “nutrient-packed”

Another beautiful aspect of this recipe is how perfectly it fills a 12-part cupcake pan. Less mess and cleanup, and you have 12 perfect muffins at the end of the process–I didn’t weigh or measure at any point during the batter scooping!

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pro tip: butter or oil the lip of each “muffin hole” well so that your muffins crisp up nicely during the bake and pop out of the tin easily after

Then bake! And voila:

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so delicious, and not so bad for your gut/waistline

For those of you who like to nerd out a little bit about food, part of what’s so great about these muffins is the amount of fiber paired with the natural sugar. As you probably know, your liver processes sugar as well as alcohol. When you consume an excessive amount of sugar in a short amount of time, it “panics” and transforms the sugar into fat rather than processing it as fuel for the body. I guess it’s kind of like hitting the snooze button when your alarm goes off.

Eating fiber with your sugar reduces the chance of the snooze button being hit; it slows down the process of digestion and gives your liver a chance to keep up with your carbohydrates. This is one of the many, many reasons that we love fresh produce.

So, not only are you getting antioxidants from the honey and blueberries and minerals from the molasses, but you’re getting our friend fiber from the whole wheat flour, wheat bran, berries, and coconut to boot. Are you psyched yet??

Molasses Blueberry Bran Muffins

Note: You can add whatever seasonal fruit is desirable, coconut flakes, dates, hemp hearts, toasted seeds or nuts…you can even sub applesauce for mashed baked sweet potato with a few tablespoons of water. It’s all about texture and natural sweetness with these muffins! 

Ingredients

  • butter or oil for muffin tin (optional)
  • 1 c wheat bran
  • 1 ½ c whole wheat flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 1 ½ c blueberries
  • ½ c walnuts, lightly toasted and chopped
  • ¼ c shredded, unsweetened coconut
  • 1 c milk
  • ½ c molasses
  • 3 Tbs honey
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • ½ c applesauce (or scant ½ c mashed, cooked sweet potato with 3 Tbs water)
  • 2 Tbs melted coconut oil

Preheat oven to 400°F and butter or oil a muffin tin or line with paper.

In a large bowl, whisk together bran, flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Stir in fruit, nuts, coconut, and any other desired accoutrements to the flour mixture.

In a medium bowl, mix together milk, molasses, honey, eggs, applesauce or sweet potato mash, and oil.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Divide the batter evenly between the 12 cups. (They will feel perilously full, but this is how they should look!)

Bake for 15-18 minutes–no longer than 20 minutes. A toothpick should come out clean when inserted into the muffin. Enjoy!

Peach-Blueberry Cobbler with Cornmeal Biscuits

It was a busy week at the bakery. Not too busy, however, to make time for this peach-blueberry cobbler with cornmeal biscuits!

By the time I made it to the end of my work week, I was exhausted…but still made time to make concord-orange zest jam with the grapes I harvested with my dearest, oldest friend over the course of the week. At her recommendation, I followed Rachel Saunders’ recipe from her book dedicated to preserves, titled “Blue Chair.” It’s quickly risen to the top of my wishlist of cookbooks to own someday.

Since I am newly obsessed with serrano peppers thanks to this phenomenal recipe, I partitioned off a smaller pot to experiment with, and added a few thin slices of the green pepper, and its seeds. The results were pretty amazing: sweet, complex jam, with a hint of peppery spice right at the finish. Worth going back for more grapes, and going through the painstaking labor of stemming 4 lbs and squeezing each grape from its skin.

But by the time Sunday rolled around, I was ready to cook some more…one day of rest after a week of 10+ hour workdays is enough right? (Right??) I rose from bed, donned my enormous sweater, cute pants, and shoes NOT caked in flour and syrup, and went to the farmer’s market.

For around $30, I got a large bag full of Italian Empress plums, six relatively local peaches, and a whole chicken from this awesome farm. Plum preserves are next on the list, followed by Alison Roman’s chicken and dumplings.

But these peaches! Lord! Is there anything like that scent? A scent that screams to be paired with vanilla, almond, whiskey, cream…and berries! (Wild blackberries are my favorite pairing with peach, but they’re few and far between this late in the season–they’ve had an odd year.)

I got into the kitchen and started scheming. I’ve already made a peach cake this year using peach puree in the batter (with blackberry quick jam in between layers with marscapone buttercream frosting), and several peach galettes. But y’know what I haven’t had in a millennia? A good, old-fashioned cobbler.

Peach-Blueberry Cobbler with Cornmeal Biscuits

Of course, I had to go to Smitten Kitchen for this one when I saw the cornmeal biscuits on top. I followed her simple recipe almost exactly, only added a little less brown sugar than hers, and my cobbler was mostly peaches with just a HINT of blueberries. And dang, was I pleased with the results.

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perfectly ripe fruit is such a turn on, no?

Aside from being utterly delicious, this recipe is dead simple, and there’s a wonderful interplay of textures between the cooked fruit and biscuits. I made my biscuits with a coarser grind of cornmeal for added texture. At first I thought, “Oh boy, I’ve gone too far with this one!” because my biscuits came out of the oven damned GRITTY. But as the cobbler sat in my fridge over the next 8 hours (yes, I had cobbler for lunch–don’t judge me!) the cornmeal did what cornmeal does best–absorbed that beautiful, beautiful liquid.

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I used Bob’s Red Mill polenta, but finer cornmeal would work beautifully here too, especially if you want your cobbler, like, yesterday.

Now I’m from the rain and never ate a single biscuit, to my knowledge, before the age of 25 when I started working as a barista for a roaster in Portland and was around morning pastries every day (I’m looking at you, bacon cheddar biscuit). So to say these fluffy creations aren’t exactly in my intuition base would be an understatement. They seem deceptively simple, but if you’ve ever had a lifeless, or tacky, or painfully chewy biscuit, you begin to understand there is more than meets the eye, here. Cornmeal seems an unlikely addition at first, but the two have a relationship I’m eager to continue to explore.

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fruit dotted with cornmeal dough

I didn’t have regular milk for the buttermilk so I used almond, but the acid from the lemon I used to make it did what acid does with baking powder: caused floof to happen. (Yay, floof!) I spooned these pillowy-yet-hearty beauties over my fruit with mounting anticipation. Thank goodness this whole thing only takes about 30 minutes to make.

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thar she blows!

Because I’m freaky like that, I brushed the exposed fruit with warm salted honey/apricot jam glaze, just for a little extra zhush. I’m telling you, I could not stop eating this cobbler.

Go get you some peaches (if you haven’t already!) and make yourself dessert. Don’t neglect the cornmeal! Take pride in your gritty biscuit!! It’s a welcome counterpart to cooked peach, believe me.

Peach-Blueberry Cobbler with Cornmeal Biscuit Topping
Adapted from smittenkitchen.com

Fruit
1 ½ lbs (about 4 cups) pounds peaches, pitted and cut into chunks of various sizes
1 pint (about 2 cups) blueberries, rinsed and dried
1/3 cup-2/3 cup packed dark-brown sugar (to taste)
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt

Biscuit
3/4 cup (3 1/4 ounces) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cornmeal (choose your own adventure with grit! 😉
3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/2 cup buttermilk, or about 2 tsp lemon juice or vinegar in any kind of milk, adding up to ½ cup

Preheat oven to 425°F. Toss peaches and blueberries in sugar, flour, lemon juice, cinnamon and salt in a 2-quart casserole dish.

Mix together the flour, cornmeal, brown sugar, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Cut the butter into the dry mixture with a pastry blender or your fingers, then incorporate buttermilk with a rubber spatula until a wet, tacky dough forms.

Dollop heaping spoonfuls of the biscuit dough over the coated fruit, leaving gaps in between spoonfuls. Bake until the fruit is tender and the biscuit tops are browned, about 20 to 25 minutes. If you are so inclined, heat up 2 Tbs of honey or light-colored jam with a pinch of salt and brush the tops of the exposed fruit. Enjoy with your favorite creamy sidekick (ice cream, yogurt, crème fraiche, honeyed whipped cream…etc)!