My house smells wonderful!

Mmmmm...wouldn't it be fun if we could upload smells to go along with our recipes and photos? It smells delicious in here and I wish I could share.

Photo from Eating Well
Banana-Bran Muffins

Now that the weather has cooled off nicely, I'm beginning to revel in baking again. I'm continuing to explore more whole grain recipes like I was doing last winter, especially muffins for breakfasts and snacks. For those who are interested in baking with more whole grains, I've marked which recipes are low-fat and which contain whole grains to make finding the healthier recipes a little easier.

These muffins were recommended to me by a CLBB member on this thread. The only change I made was to make these with white whole wheat flour instead of whole wheat flour. Wegmans carries King Arthur's White Whole Wheat Flour and I've been anxious to try it out. While I love to include as many whole grains as possible, I'm not always crazy about the taste of whole wheat flour. I'm hoping that this flour will be a nice compromise and so far, so good.

These muffins contain both whole wheat flour and wheat bran, but they are still light and airy, not dense and hearty like some whole grain muffins. I happen to like both textures, but for those who are less-than-thrilled with whole grain muffins, this muffin is a good place to start.

I do miss the buttery taste that a really good, full-fat banana muffin has - I wonder if replacing half of the canola oil with 2 tablespoons of butter would help? Of course, that would up the saturated fat in this recipe, but it might be an acceptable trade-off. Something to try out next time.....

This was one of those times when the photo was coming out even worse than usual, but here's one just to prove I tried. I've have GOT to figure out how to take a nice photo! But I'm afraid it could mean investing in a nicer camera, and I just can't do that right now. Someday!


Tags: banana, muffins, whole grain, Eating Well, recipe, food, low-fat