Classic All-Bran/Bran Buds Muffin Recipe: Best Bran Muffins Ever

I grew up with my mom's bran muffin recipe that was perfect for a big family: Make a batch of the batter, keep it in the fridge, and bake a dozen when the mood strikes. The batter keeps for at least six weeks, although not forever, and they're tasty enough that you likely wouldn't have it in there too long anyway.

These muffins are really the best. Soft and delicious, filling and satisfying. Good just dripping with butter, or topped with some homemade jam, honey, maple syrup, peanut butter, whatever you like on your muffins. They're not overly sweet and cupcake-like; if I'm going to eat a cupcake I want frosting, dang it.

One day out of curiosity I went searching for the recipe online. Mind you, I've made it so often over the years that I have it memorized. Since it involves copious quantities of All-Bran and Bran Buds I figured the website of the cereal manufacturer who gets my money every time I make these would have the recipe. But no! They have a couple of recipes including one they call the "original" but neither is the one I grew up with. My family recipe isn't even a combination of their Bran Buds Muffins and Original All-Bran Muffins recipes.

The world clearly needs this recipe captured for posterity. Sharing it now, with an * to mark where I adjusted something in the original Mom-approved recipe. Those are explained in the notes below the recipe.

This is a lot of batter. I use my Kitchen-Aid to mix. Don't overmix or you'll toughen the batter, but if you have a stand mixer of some kind feel free to let it help you. 

Yield: I'm not sure of the precise yield since that partly depends on whether you fill the cup to heaping to get a tall dome, whether you make some mini-muffins along the way because they're just so darned cute, and other factors. I'd guesstimate around 4 dozen or so regular muffins.

Classic All-Bran/Bran Buds Muffin Recipe

2 cups boiling water

2 cups Bran Buds

4 eggs

1 cup granulated sugar*

1 cup brown sugar* 

1 cup vegetable oil*

4 cups buttermilk

5 cups whole wheat pastry flour*

5 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon sea salt

4 cups All-Bran cereal (sticks)*

Put the Bran Buds in a bowl and pour the boiling water over top. Stir together and set aside to soften, stirring again after a couple of minutes; they'll turn into a bran mass within about 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, beat the oil and sugar together until well combined. (If you're using butter you get to cream the butter and sugar together; I don't have a tasty verb for what happens when you're using oil.) 

Add the eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each one. (Yes, yes, you can dump them in all at once. But here's why you want to slow down and add eggs one at a time.)

Add the 4 cups of buttermilk and mix in.

Add the Bran Buds mixture in small spoonfuls, beating/whisking to distribute through the batter.

In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt. (Or, to be honest, if you're like me you dump in the flour and sprinkle the other things across the top of the batter and you know what? That totally works. I do it one cup plus one teaspoon at a time for the flour/baking soda; just don't accidentally put in 5 teaspoons of salt.)

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix gently until combined. 

Fold in the All-Bran.

Cover or transfer the mixture to a sealed container and refrigerate the mixture for at least 8 hours. 24 hours to two days is best.* 

Bake in the center of a pre-heated 400°F oven for 16-18 minutes until the tops are no longer wet and when you touch the muffin top it feels done, not soggy. You can also test with a toothpick the way you would a cake. I've never made these in the giant muffin tins; adjust baking time based on your experience with other recipes if you use one of those.

These work in a mini-muffin tin too, for a cute snack size. Set the timer for 15 minutes and check since the little ones bake faster.

Notes

*Sugars: Original recipe called for 3 cups granulated sugar; I reduced by 1 cup and made it half brown, half white. Do not reduce sugar further; I can attest that the batter will sour quickly.

*Oil: The original recipe called for butter here. I use canola. I've also tried using coconut oil and it worked. (If you haven't baked with it before, refined coconut oil doesn't add a coconutty flavor; it acts like shortening.)

*Flour: Original recipe called for regular all-purpose flour and it's fine to use that. When I've been out of whole wheat pastry flour and too committed to the idea of muffins to wait for a grocery run I've used half white, half regular whole wheat, and it worked fine.

*All-Bran: I've successfully substituted Fiber One cereal. Basically you want bran-based sticks here.

*Letting the batter sit before baking: You can bake right away and they'll taste great. The extra time is to enable the moisture in the batter to break down the All-Bran a bit. I've tried using the buttermilk to soak the All-Bran the way the boiling water soaks the Bran Buds, but realized that meant the flour wasn't getting really hydrated the way it should.

Mix-ins and flavors: If you like muffins with cinnamon, you can add it to the batter or make a cinnamon/white sugar mix and sprinkle that on top before baking (1 teaspoon cinnamon to 1/3 cup white sugar is about right). Other spices would work too. Use your favorite muffin recipe's seasoning and adjust for the larger amount of batter in this.

Vegan option: Use flaxseed or chia seed eggs in place of the eggs. Use vegan buttermilk (make your own with help from Minimalist Baker). I've made it this way and they turned out fine, although I think I get a bit more rise with real eggs holding everything together.

Other recipes I reviewed but didn't bake, so I won't attest to their flavors

• Classic All-Bran Muffins with Buttermilk by The Cozy Plum: Comes the closest, using bran flakes instead of Bran Buds. She also introduces a fun "Cow Patty" version that produces muffin tops baked on a cookie sheet. (Take that, Elaine and Mr. Lippmann)
• Classic All-Bran Muffin Recipe by Insanely Good: Related, in that it uses buttermilk, but lacking the cereal combo and introducing the raisin heresy
• Kellogg's Bran Buds Muffin Recipe at Food.com: Clearly has been tweaked to reduce the overall fat, and they crush the Bran Buds rather than soaking them in boiling water
• Classic Bran Muffins on the Canadian Kellogg's site: Interestingly, these come a little closer than the same recipe on the US Kellogg's site by using buttermilk

Other recipes I've shared

• Vegan Cranberry Caramelized Red Onion Orange Chutney Recipe Experimentation 
• Moroccan Spiced Chickpeas and Squash
• Really Good Sour Cream Coffeecake with Serious Amounts of Crumb Topping
• Oddly Addictive Seasoned Flax Seed Crackers 
• Autumn Wild Rice Not-a-Recipe 
• Peach Elderberry Chutney: A Farmers' Market Experiment
• Cornbread and Cornbread: New England Spider Cake and Crackling Corn Bread
• Not Exactly a Recipe for Potato Soup: My Vegetarian Trickery
• Recipe Time: Interpretation of a Kinda Chunky Tomato/Red Bell Pepper/Black Bean Soup
• By Popular Demand: A Recipe for Spicy Fries
• Seriously Good Oatmeal Cookies