It’s not often that we have regular baked goods in the house, but since I made these scones for Wildstyle yesterday, it was a chance to make muffins for @guntotnhippie. He happens to enjoy raisin bran muffins and Wildstyle doesn’t like baked fruit anyway, so she wouldn’t feel left out. For the first run, I loosely followed this recipe but they were incredibly dry. Thank goodness we’re butter fans, because it took loads of Kerrygold and dunking in coffee to get them down.
I didn't realize I'd be doing this post at the time so I failed to get any photos of the hockey pucks, my apologies.
So last night, as I was making a new batch of goat milk kefir, I realized my last batch had fermented too long and the kids weren’t going to touch it being that sour.
Lightbulb moment!
Perfect opportunity to try some Soaked Bran Muffins! By soaking grains in an acidic medium such as yogurt, kefir, whey or even a lemon juice or vinegar mixture, the digestibility of the grains increases greatly as does the bioavailability of the nutrients. It also adds in moisture and gives a mild sourness that really helps develop the flavor.
So, here’s my revised recipe.
@Crowbarmama’s Soaked Raisin Oat Bran & Almond Muffins
1.5 cups oat bran
1.5 cups whole wheat flour
1.5 cups dairy kefir (Or acidic medium of your choice as noted above)
Mix the above ingredients between 8-24 hours before baking time
3 eggs
½ cup brown sugar
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
¼ c butter, melted and cooled a bit
1 c Plumped raisins*
½ c almond flour ** (or whatever flour you prefer)
Soak the first 3 ingredients overnight.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 400, prepare your muffin pans and your raisins.
*Place 1 cup of raisins into a small saucepan and just cover with water. Bring to a boil, then cover and shut off heat. Let sit for 10 minutes, then drain the raisins, and let cool a bit-I placed mine in the freezer. (I usually reserve the remaining liquid for use in another recipe.)
Mix the eggs, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt and butter. I used the Vitamix, but you could easily mix it by hand. Then stir this mixture into the soaked mixture. I did use my stand mixture since it was rather thick.
Stir in the raisins.
**At this point, survey the batter. If it appears too moist, add the ½ c of almond flour or whatever flour you prefer. If it seems fine to you, leave it out.
Spoon the batter into the cups about ¾ full. I ended up with 14 muffins.
Check after 15 minutes. Mine were still too moist. At 20 minutes mine were golden on top and perfectly moist inside. They weren't your typical dense bran muffins. They weren't completely fluffy either, but a nice in-between. I'll definitely make them again. Maybe I won't even tweak the recipe! (Nah! Who am I kidding? I ALWAYS tweak recipes, even my own!)
My kids were eagerly volunteering to help with the photos, but that meant keeping a watchful eye that they weren’t nibbling on them between shots! I shooed them outside and they for some reason decided they were on a mission to try to dig out our little trailer for the riding mower/snowblower. As you can see, it's next to our parking structure, so there's a good 4 ft of packed snow encasing the little trailer. I admired their valiant effort and they chowed down on muffins and scones to reward their valiant effort.
I find that soaked recipes are very rare to find online. Anyone else have a soaked recipe they enjoy? I would love to find more! Please feel free to share!
