For J’s birthday today I baked him blueberry bran muffins. The funny thing about this fellow is he doesn’t like sweets of any kind. No pastries, cakes, cookies etc. I suppose this creates a healthy balance for our household. If he did like sweets I would be baking all the time and would probably weigh 500 pounds. J’s only vaguely baked good related weakness is bran muffins. He’s probably tried every bran muffin in the city from places high and low, ranging from Tim Hortons and the sad muffins in the subway station, to Whole Foods, Pusateris and various neighborhood coffee shops. As a result of extensive taste testing we’ve decided the blueberry bran muffins at Whole Foods are our number one favorite.

When we first started dating I would to troll the Internet for recipes and bake a different version of bran muffins every week. None of them came close to the Whole Foods muffins. Eventually I became disheartened and gave up. For J’s birthday this year I decided to give it another go and tried out a simple recipe from Heidi Swanson’s beautiful food blog 101 Cookbooks. The recipe appealed to me because it sounded like the right balance between yummy ingredients and healthfulness, using full fat yogurt (2 cups!), honey, egg, and just 2 tablespoons of brown sugar. While these muffins are not really like the Whole Foods muffins, we were very happy with the way they turned out (I ate 2 in row fresh out of the oven) and would definitely make them again. Read More »