{"id":1435,"date":"2019-10-05T21:49:12","date_gmt":"2019-10-05T21:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.malak.ca\/blog\/?p=1435"},"modified":"2021-02-15T03:04:24","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T03:04:24","slug":"learning-to-make-bran-muffins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.malak.ca\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/10\/05\/learning-to-make-bran-muffins\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to make bran muffins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Over the past few weeks, I’ve learned two more recipes<\/a> — or three, given that one is represented by two recipes of the same thing — to add to my repertoire of cooking skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mom loves bran muffins<\/a>, and has a bit of a penchant for crisped rice and marshmallow treats.<\/a> I’ve known these things for years, but over the past few weeks an imp pushed me over the edge to learn how to make them for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like both, but previously never really had a personal grand desire to learn how to make either, even despite my love of a family friend’s ambrosia-worthy banana bran muffins, which I used to occasionally ask her to make for me in my younger years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first thing I did was look on the internet for recipes on how to make both, a trivial task. Here are the recipes I found for bran muffins<\/a> (here’s my archive<\/a>) (here’s my recipe based on it<\/a>) and for crisped rice treats<\/a> <\/a>(here’s my archive<\/a>, and here’s my recipe based on it<\/a>). (Interestingly, the Canadian website for Rice Krispies lists a slightly higher ratio of marshmallows than the recipe on the US website, and also calls for vanilla extract!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The crispy rice treats<\/a> were almost as trivially easy to make as it was to find a recipe for them. I bought the ingredients, and within a couple of days made two batches, being able to serve one batch to a willing and hungry group. I found that indeed the melting marshmallows can burn easily in the pan if you’re not paying attention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mom got her supply a few days later, and happily began munching on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the bran muffins<\/a>, I looked around the kitchen, and to my great pleasure, I happened to have all the ingredients called for in the recipe I’d found on the internet<\/a> (here’s my archive<\/a>) (here’s my recipe based on it<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I proceeded to make the muffins<\/a>, and was surprised at how easy it was to make picture perfect muffins. Despite considering myself a competent home cook, I expected it to be a bit more of a challenge. Instead, the recipe was easy to follow; given the attribution, while I am sure that it was “somebody’s recipe”, it came across as having no doubt been fastidiously reviewed, tested, tweaked, and re-written by the website’s editorial staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They turned out great, and of course I tasted them in advance. The real test was when I presented them to my mom. She liked them a lot, and ended up eating all of the bran muffins using the internet recipe<\/a> (here’s my version<\/a>), two at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She did, however, ask me to make some bran muffins with molasses, and told me where to find her old recipes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The old molasses I had had begun to solidify with age, but could be liquefied in a microwave oven; however, it re-solidified and created hard little balls once mixed with the cooler oil and sugar. An electric beater could not break them up; I baked the muffins, and they had globs of molasses at their bottoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n