Baking Bouchon - Recipe 63: Bran Muffins

I'm not sure how I feel about bran muffins.  When I worked in the bakery we sold a TON of bran muffins.  I think maybe people believe that they're healthy and while they might have more fiber in them than regular muffins, they're still loaded with as much sugar and fat as regular muffins.

Despite the smorgasbord of ingredients it takes to make these muffins, the batter comes together pretty easily. 

Butter and sugar are creamed together.  To that you add eggs, honey and molasses followed by alternating the dry ingredients with the buttermilk and half and half.

The completed batter also has pears, golden raisins and pumpkin seeds in it. 

The pears are supposed to be poached pears like the ones used in the pear feuillette but I was not about to go through that process for 1 1/2 tablespoons of pears so I used regular, fresh pears.

The raisins are raisins.  They're gross.

The pumpkin seeds are great, but I'm confused by them.  Every time I clean out a pumpkin to make my Halloween Jack-o-Lantern the pumpkin seeds are white.  Even after they're roasted they're white.   So why is it that when I buy pumpkin seeds they're green?  I'm not alone in this question, the cashier at the grocery store asked me the same thing and I didn't have an answer for her.

These muffins didn't bake up as fluffy as some of the other ones in the cookbook.  I'm not really sure why.  It's probably the fiber.

These are not my favorite muffins in this book.  The best thing about them are the green pumpkin seeds.  They add a good crunch to the muffin that I enjoy.  They are definitely the most filling muffins so far but filling does not a great muffin make.

I had a friend visiting and she claimed to like these muffins.

CA disliked these entirely.  He didn't even finish one.  He thought the worst part was the pumpkin seeds.

Opposites attract.

Enjoy!
Julie