3 Reasons I Bake Bran Muffins!

Three Reasons Bran Muffins are Healthy

1. Apparently flaxseed is so good for you, that had my muffins existed approximately 600 years ago, it would have been illegal not to eat them!

Haha I'm not even kidding! I found this on like three different sites! And they're not even all flaxseed vendors!

This is like the opposite of banning large drinks in New York...

Apparently, as if by divine inspiration, Frankish emperor Charlemagne predicted the health benefits of flaxseed and required it consumed by all his subjects!. If you don't believe Charlie, WebMD also agrees.

(original) image courtesy of thehistoryprofessor.us

2. They're NOT cookies!

Image courtesy of okmagazine.com

You'll have to decide for yourself if that's a plus or a minus.

3. Bran muffins = sleep. 

Portable bran muffins --> I can eat breakfast in the car or at school instead of at home --> I can wake up later --> MORE SLEEP!

Image courtesy of clipartpal.com

Those reasons sound good enough for me! 

Chocolate Chip Muffins worthy of the most important meal of the day

Sometimes you need to function at 6:00 in the morning. Sometimes, you need chocolate to get you through it. Your answer :)

The "It's too early for chocolate" Muffins

The other evening I was taken with the creative spirit and decided to throw together (with a few alterations) a muffin recipe I found in my mom's recipe binder (I use the term loosely, since the spine of the rings is not bound to the spine of the cover and half the pages are not bound to anything). It was worth making off-the-cuff because I actually didn't have to do anything to the recipe to make it healthy enough that I wouldn't mind eating it for breakfast on a normal day and I had the essential ingredients.

Review: I thought they were okay. They weren't horribly flavorful, and I definitely appreciated the apple chunks I threw in there. The shocker, though is that my brothers LOVED THEM. To give you some context, these are the same brothers for whom I will make 50 cinnamon rolls in a sitting and they will come back a month and a half layer petitioning more. That meaning, that they have no aversion to sugar for breakfast (and snack and lunch and dinner, sometimes). But they really liked the subtle flavor of these muffins. My youngest brother (who isn't really a big eater in the first place) had two for breakfast and another for DESSERT. He told me he liked them better than my amazing and time-tested chocolate-chip muffins. Hear that, folks? BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE.

Another upside of these muffins is that if you have your oven on convection, they take like 10-15 minutes to bake, which is great if the designated baker (oh shoot, that was me) oversleeps and forgets to preheat the oven until half an hour before you have to leave.

So in the honor of those who are looking for something more toned-down, less sugary, and less time-consuming in the wee pre-school hours of the morning, I present: