Breakfast-eaters, snackers, hangers-out: it’s time to reclaim the muffin from the fast-food joints and even from the groovy independent cafes.
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Like the picture? Get more recipes like the one below from our very own Yukon Boreal Gourmet, Michele Genest. Her book, the Boreal Gourmet, just got a nice, nice, tasty review from GEIST.
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Muffins should not be as big as your head, as my friend LP observes. When I was a child a muffin was a 6-bite morsel available in the glass case in the cafeteria or on the counter at the greasy spoon. Now it is an epic that requires a whole morning to consume, and you have to mount an expedition to find the nuts and berries inside. So here are two recipes for muffins of sensible size that feature wild northern berries, are easy to make, low on fat and sugar and bursting with healthy grains. They are similar but not the same.
Low Bush Cranberry Bran Muffins
On a blazing blue day last week I climbed the clay cliffs above Whitehorse and picked a pint of low bush cranberries before breakfast. I came back home with cold fingers and an appetite and whipped up these bran muffins, based on a recipe from that brilliant standby, Joy of Cooking, but tweaked here and there. I’m really pleased with them; they remind me of my grandmother’s bran muffins, for which the recipe is lost (my mother and my aunt have searched their files in vain) and which I’ve been trying to replicate for a long time. Let us sing their praises: light, moist, not too sweet, branny but not too branny and featuring the nice tart bite of low bush cranberries.
Dry Ingredients
1 cup (240 ml) all-purpose flour
1 cup (240 ml) whole wheat flour
1 cup (240 ml) bran
2 Tbsp. (30 ml) sugar
1 tsp. (5 ml) baking soda
¼ tsp. (1.2 ml) salt
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