Oh me oh my.

I love bran. Out of all the grains, bran is my favourite, even more than rice and I can shovel bowls, and bowls, and bowls of rice down... ask anyone, especially on days in the office where they order sushi, Chinese or Indian, I go up time after time just for rice, it's bad.

Last weekend when I was at Jordan's his mom had made a pile of bran muffins, and boy were they delicious. This made me begin to crave bran, and then I remembered my insanely, devilishly, sinful Vegan Coconut, Banana, Pear, and Raspberry Jam Bran Muffins (wow that's a mouthful!) Well, I actually had a some bit of canned pumpkin left from the Oatmeal Pumpkin Cookies, and I figured why not make some pumpkin bran muffins, well of course that is what I did. I loved these muffins, again just like the cookies, moist, pillowy bunches of goodness. The only thing missing unfortunately was some candied ginger, bah, they would of been the ultimate gift of perfection had there of been candied ginger. Regardless, definitely still so good that I've been eating three a day, le sigh.

If you're going to make these, I highly recommend making them when you have people to share them with. No one in my house has been eating them, so I've been happily doing the honours, however, I don't think my waistline is appreciating them so much. Honestly, I do my work out and I feel like a gigantic fatty and I think it's because of all the badness I've been eating the past few weeks. Not that these muffins are bad, I've just been consuming in larger quantities than necessary. However, if you continue scrolling down, I will show you what I've started doing with these delicious noms and now I've gotten majorly, majorly full off of these bad boys.


Pumpkin Bran Muffins

Recipe adapted from here

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups bran
• 1 1/2 cups soft whole wheat (pastry) flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/8 tsp of nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and line a 12 muffin cups.

Mix the Wet Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons molasses
• 2 flax eggs (2 tbsp flax seed + 6 tbsp water, mixed well and left to sit for a few minutes_
  
• 1 cup puréed cooked pumpkin

In a somewhat larger mixing bowl, beat the molasses and one of the eggs into the sugar. Beat in the second egg, then the pumpkin purée.

Finish the Muffins:

• 3/4 cup chocolate soy milk
• 1/4 cup walnuts
• 1/4 cup dried cherries

I don't know why I never thought of doing this concoction for breakfast before the other day, but I'm glad I finally did think of it. Come to think of it, I probably never threw this together because I've never been a fan of milk and cereal, yuck. I find with time I'm more open to trying things that I completely disliked when I was a child like Peanut Butter and Jelly, ohmygoodness!

This concoction was deeeeelish, surprisingly even after being in milk for fifteen or so minutes the muffin didn't become a complete soggy mess, no it was great. This was so insanely filling, it wasn't as big of a breakfast as it looks (the bowls at work are teeny) but it was filling. Honestly, I didn't eat for almost five hours after eating this bowl of nutrition... so what did I do?

Muffin "Cereal" Bowl

Recipe by me

Step one:
Slathered 1 of the above muffins with peanut butter and a second with jam.
Step two:
Mushed the muffins together and cut them into tiny pieces and threw them into a bowl.
Step three:
Added a chopped banana, 3 dried prunes cut into chunks, and approximately six or so almonds.
Step four:
Top with soy milk.
Step five:
Took bite after bite, enjoying the crunch, fruit, milk, flavours of peanut butter and jam and everything else in the bowl, oh it was perfect and oh so versatile! Will definitely be doing this with my muffins from now on!