Good Eating Monday: Cereal Bran Muffins

Today's Good Eating Monday recipe is my favorite muffin recipe from Shredd's Spread Country Crock margarine. Years ago, they offered a free recipe book (back before the age of personal computers, when everything was still just printed), which I ordered and got. It's a small booklet full of muffin recipes for both sweet & savory types. Some are good recipes; some not so great.
But of the ones that are really good, this Cereal Bran Muffin recipe is one of them!

It's also very flexible and substitutions or additions can be made easily. You can augment the flour measurement with wheat flour or oatmeal. You can add raisins or nuts or chocolate chips.
 You can also switch out the margarine for applesauce or real butter and use whatever sweetening medium you prefer. 

Just keep in mind the moisture to dry ingredients ratio--because you can easily end up with a mushy muffins if the quantity of moist ingredients out-balances the dry!

For this recipe, choose any healthy, whole grain or bran type cereal, such as Bran Flakes with or without raisins, Total, Wheat Chex, original Grapenuts, All Bran, Raisin Nut Bran---basically anything that's not a pre-sweetened kid cereal.

A general bran muffin picture from Pinterest

Cereal Bran Muffins:
1 1/2 cups of bran or whole grain cereal of your choice

1 cup milk 

1/2 cup margarine or butter, melted (or natural applesauce)

1 large egg, beaten

1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon

Optional: raisins, nuts or chocolate chips

Directions:

In a medium bowl: combine cereal & milk and let stand 5 minutes.

Stir in egg & melted margarine. In a sifter: combine flour, baking powder, salt & cinnamon. Sift dry ingredients into wet ingredients, stirring quickly until just mixed. If you're adding extra raisins, nuts or chocolate chips, fold those in now.  Spoon batter into 12 greased a pan with large 2 1/d2 inch muffin cups. (Rule of thumb is generally to fill cups 2/3 full, whatever size you're using.)
 Bake in oven preheated to 400  degrees for 20 minutes or until golden brown. If using a dark colored pan, be sure to reduce heat to 375.

Makes 12 large muffins. (If your muffin pan has smaller size cups, you'll end up with more muffins.)

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That's it. Eat up, me hearties, yo-ho!