Raisin Bran Muffins

Raisin Bran Muffins – all lined up and ready to go.

Sort of makes you want to put a bow on them and give them as gifts.

Well, the good news is that you can!

These muffins are delicious, moist and easy, easy, easy to make. The bonus is that the recipe makes a LOT of muffins. So if you have someone on your list who likes tasty baked treats (and honestly, who doesn’t?) give them a nice box of these babies and call it Christmas.

Here’s what you need:

Raisin Bran (15 ounce box)*, 1 quart of Buttermilk, Flour, Sugar, Eggs, Butter, Baking Soda, and Salt.

*To make your life as easy as possible, look for a 15 ounce box of Raisin Bran in the store. That way you don’t have to measure – just dump it in and go. IF you can’t find a 15 ounce box, you can measure out 6 cups of raisin bran cereal from a larger box and be pretty close to the correct amount.

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Hey, don’t worry if you don’t consider yourself a “baker”. If you can use a spoon and stir, you can make these tasty muffins!

Put 2 sticks (you heard me) of butter in a dish and melt them in the microwave. Don’t freak out about using 2 sticks of butter, this makes a lot of muffins…about 4 dozen.

While the butter is melting, grab a REALLY BIG bowl and sift the dry ingredients together. 5 cups of flour – remember to level off the top of the flour and other dry ingredients to get an accurate measurement.

5 teaspoons of baking soda

and 2 teaspoons of salt.

Sift, sift, sift. If you’re using a traditional sifter with a crank handle you can sift the sugar as well. The mesh of my sifting strainer is so fine that the sugar doesn’t go through so I sift the flour and other ingredients and add the sugar later. Either way works.

Add 2-1/2 cups sugar to the dry ingredients.

Dump in your 15 ounce box of raisin bran and give it all a big stir to combine.

At this point take a look at your cereal and decide if it has enough raisins for your liking. Sometimes they get kind of skimpy on the raisins so I add a handful or two of extra raisins to the mix.

Break 4 eggs into a small dish and beat them slightly with a fork to break up the yolks.

Add the eggs to the cereal mixture. Pour in 1 quart of buttermilk.

And pour in the melted sticks of butter.

Mix everything together until all of the dry flour has been incorporated.

Now, you CAN bake these right now. However, if you wait even an hour and let the batter rest in the refrigerator, the buttermilk will work it’s way into all those little flakes of cereal and the muffins will be even better.

Also, if you’re not up for baking 4 dozen muffins at once, this batter will easily keep in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks. And guess what? The muffins will be even better after the batter has rested for a few days. It’s like magic.

These muffins also freeze really, really well. So if you have extras, pop them in a zipper bag and toss them in the freezer for some time when you’re crazy and too busy to make breakfast.

When you’re ready to bake, pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees.

Grab your muffin tins and give them a spray with baking or non-stick spray. You can use those little paper liners if you want but they bug me.

Fill the cups up at least 3/4 full and bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes until they are golden brown and delicious.

Cool on a wire rack. Eat one of the warm muffins as a reward to yourself!

Decide who’s on your “nice” list this year and bake them some raisin bran muffins.

Here’s the recipe!

Raisin Bran Muffins

True story….one year my mom baked a TON 0f muffins to give as gifts. I mean dozens and dozens of muffins of several varieties. The bran muffins were sitting on the kitchen table cooling when she discovered my cat Cleo gently napping amongst the muffins. Not a good day for the muffins, the cat or the cat owner. It’s a miracle that the woman still loves me.

Henry says, “I would never nap in your cooling baked goods. I will, however, lie here and bite holes in all of your wrapping paper. People like it that way.”