Dinner's On Me!: Date Bran Muffins

Once upon a time I had a job as an aide at a Jr High School. During that same year my friend and roommate worked at a High School. You know what’s great about that? When the kids get out of school for spring break, so do the aides. My friend decided to spend that one delightful week at her parent’s house in California and invited me to join her. I have to admit that many of my memories of that road trip are food related (what’s wrong with me?)

One morning my friend pulled a bowl out of the refrigerator and began scooping some brown goop into some foil muffin liners. Um, I’ll pass on breakfast, thank you. As these things baked however, I changed my tune. They smelled like heaven itself. We ate them hot from the oven, sliced in half with a bit of butter on each. I believe by the second bite I was asking for the recipe.

There are several great things about these muffins (besides the taste.) First of all these are refrigerator muffins. You mix up the batter and can keep it in the fridge for a week or so. Each morning you bake just enough muffins for that one day so (and here’s the second great thing:) you always get to eat hot fresh baked muffins. Wowza. Great-thing #3: this recipe makes a huge batch so it will last you for awhile. If you’re lucky. This last batch lasted our family only 5 days. The kids LOVE them, and Mr Dinner’s on Me took half of the mix up to work and baked fresh muffins each morning in the office toaster oven. I’m not kidding.

I’ll add the recipe below as well as a printer-friendly version. First, some important details. The recipe calls for either butter or shortening. I use regular salted butter. I have used shortening before and cannot tell a difference. For the flour I grind my own wheat flour and use that, but in the past I used all-purpose flour. The kids can’t tell when I use wheat flour and when I don’t. For the dates I use these:

If you really have to you can substitute raisins, but the results are not the same. I prefer the dates, hands down. For mixing the muffins you will need a large bowl. LARGE. To store the muffins you will need a large lidded container (or two medium sized lidded containers.) A half-recipe will fit in here:

see…it has a cool lid too:

To bake the muffins I use foil muffin liners. The muffins will stick more to the paper ones, but will come out nice and clean from the foil liners. Plus they’re shiny.

If you’re not sure you’re ready to commit to a big batch of these you can cut the recipe in half. Hey, I’ll even do the math for you. That’s how much I want you to try these.

Link for full recipe	Link for half recipe

Date Bran Muffins

(full recipe)

2 cups boiling water

5 tsp baking soda

1 c butter (or shortening)

2 c granulated sugar

4 eggs

1 quart buttermilk (4 cups)

5 cups flour

1 tsp salt

4 cups All-Bran cereal

2 cups 40% Bran Flakes cereal

2 cups chopped dates

1 cup chopped walnuts

Carefully add the baking soda to the hot water and let cool. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter. Add sugar and eggs one at a time. Carefully add buttermilk and stir to combine (buttermilk will not fully incorporate and that’s fine.) Add cooled water/baking soda mixture. In a separate LARGE bowl combine flour and salt. Mix bran cereals, nuts and dates in same bowl. Stir to coat cereals with flour mixture. Add buttermilk mixture and stir only enough to blend. Store in a lidded container in refrigerator.

To Bake: Spoon into foil muffin liners. Fill 3/4 full. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

Date Bran Muffins

(half recipe)

1 cup boiling water

2 1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 cup butter (or shortening)

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

2 cups buttermilk

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups All-Bran cereal