Making healthier bran muffins

That sounds like it already has plenty of fiber, but reducing the sugar could definitely make it healthier. Reducing sugar will tend to make them less moist and tender, though, and there's really no substitute in that regard. You can try date sugar, which is just ground dehydrated whole dates -- that's a form of sugar that includes fiber and other nutrients, since it's the whole fruit. It also has a nice flavor. It behaves like brown sugar in recipes. You can also try adding fruit purée, like applesauce or mashed bananas. You'll need to reduce the liquid a bit.

Beyond that, just keep testing with reduced sugar amounts until you find the minimum amount of sugar that gives you an acceptable texture, then quit worrying and enjoy your muffin!

You should also consider the health effects of that cup of shortening, though -- assuming it's made with hydrogenated oils, then the trans fats might be doing you much more harm than the sugar. Try using liquid vegetable oil (canola oil, in particular) instead, or else one of the non-hydrogenated shortenings from health food stores (mostly made with palm kernel oil, which is probably better than trans fats but still pretty bad for your heart) or just good old fashioned butter. But this recipe should work well with oil or a mix of oil and a little butter, especially if there's some applesauce in there.

Hmmm, I had thought about the shortening issue, but I thought that substituting liquid vegetable oil would really foul up the mix. I'd have to do a major adjustment on the liquids, and if it didn't work out, that's a lot of muffins to have to throw away! Perhaps I could substitute the applesauce or bananas for half the shortening, see if that would work as a good compromise.

Is butter really any more heart-smart than hydrogenated oils such as shortening?

Thanks!

KD

Your batter may be thinner with liquid oil, but that won't necessarily ruin the muffins. Even shortening melts in the oven, but then the eggs, starches, and proteins set and the whole thing turns solid. There will be some difference in texture, but maybe not as much as you'd think. Maybe try making a half-batch to test?

The jury is out on that. It's a question of saturated fats vs. trans fats. Both of them raise cholesterol, but in different ways. Saturated fats tend to raise both HDL (good) and LDL (bad) cholesterol, whereas trans fats raise only LDL. Obviously, it should be preferrable to raise both good and bad than to just raise the bad kind. However, the data on all of this is still quite inconclusive, so don't take it as gospel truth.

Note that trans fats do also occur in natural fats and oils, but in only trace amounts. Also, I have recently heard something about manufacturers using fully hydrogenated oil (instead of partially hydrogenated), which contains much less trans fat (a fully hydrogenated fat is fully saturated; trans is unsaturated). These tend to be too solid to use as shortening, so they then combine the fully hydrogenated oil with non-hydrogenated oil to soften it. This seems to be a new idea, I don't know if there is any validity to it or if it has worked its way into products on the grocery store shelf yet.

KD wrote

Shortening contains 15-25% hardened vegetable fat( primarily the stearin and palmitin triglyceride fraction) . But it contains 50-65% vegetable oil mostly the triolein fraction .The rest are incorporated either air or nitrogen to confer the aerated shortening texture.

Butter contains 80% more of the saturated fat dispersed in its own mixed triglycerides but mostly also of the palmitin and stearin combination with other fatty acids..Not much air is incorporated also.

If you are watching for saturates butter is likely to contain more than vegetable shortening. But if you are watching for trans fats....vegetable shortening is notorious for its elaidin fraction which is connected to cardiovascular disease

With butter it also contains its own share of transfats...IIRC in form of conjugated linoleic acids ( CLA) which is found to be harmless( as there is no evidence yet to prove otherwise...

So you have the facts... I leave it to you to decide< grin> which makes a better bran muffn healthwise....butter or vegetable shortening..

Hmm...maybe I'll go with butter, as it is so much more appetizing than a plain old white chunk of fat. :)

Next batch I will reduce the sugar again and replace some of the fat with bananas maybe, see what happens. I think I'll leave the fibre alone - the ground flaxseed probably adds a good amount. Can flaxseed be substituted for all flour in a recipe? Just curious.

Fibre content is important to me because I'm pregnant. You have no idea how important fibre is until you're expecting a baby. :)

KD

Keep in mind that butter is actually only about 80% fat, and the rest mostly water. Oil, though liquid, contains no water -- oil and water don't mix, after all. Most shortening contains very little water or none, but usually a fair amount of air, so that volumetric measurements give you roughly the same amount of fat as butter, but less water, more air.

I doubt that would work in any recipe which relies on flour for structure. Muffins rely on both flour and eggs for structure.

Yeah....that is a wise choice...

BTW,,,,I made an error as I was not considering the water part of the butter when comparing the fat content, I was considering (and focusing )on 100 % fat vs fat basis.. between shortening and butter. Maybe my earlier habit ( as an instittutional user ) of comparing anhydrous milk fat (anhydrous butter) with shortening got the better of me? .. Indeed ...for household use ... water in butter should be part of the equation.

you might try a vegetable oil instead of the butter. If I recall your original recipe correctly it is quite similar to one I make to sell. I use regular vegetable oil in that; I cut the sugar to 1/2 cup, use 1 cup honey and about 4 cups of raisins. I have made them with only the honey but they don't taste quite the same and the baking time gets more difficult to guage properly. wendy

----- Original Message ----- From: "KD" Newsgroups: rec.food.baking To: Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 10:04 AM Subject: Re: Making healthier bran muffins

On Wed 11 Jan 2006 06:03:43a, Thus Spake Zarathustra, or was it KD?

This recipe was designed to use oil instead of shortening or butter. It can be doubled if the quantity isn't as much ss you want. I suspect that you could reduce the sugar by half, but I haven't tried it.

Refrigerator Bran Muffins

2 1/2 cups buttermilk 1/2 cup vegetable oil 2 eggs 3 cups Raisin Bran cereal 2 1/2 cups flour 1 cup sugar 1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoons salt 1/2 cup chopped nuts

In a large bowl, combine buttermilk, oil, and eggs; beat well. Add remanning ingredients and stir just until dry ingredients are moistened. (If desired, muffins can be baked later. Cover tightly; refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.)

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease muffins cups or line with paper liners. Fill prepared muffin cups 1/2 full. Bake for 20 to

25 minutes or until tester inserted in center comes out clean. Immediatly remove from pan. Yields: 30 muffins.

This is my favorite bran muffin recipe. I've found it's better to bake all the muffins and freeze them than to save the batter for 2 weeks. I know it say you can do that, but the batter gets to looking really gross after a week. Still smells fresh just doesn't look it.

Lynne