Just call me Betty Crocker

I love to bake.  I enjoy cooking, but I LOVE baking.  The first thing I ever made were brownies which I entered into the county fair when I was nine.  I didn't win (I think I placed third... out of three entries), but I've been hooked ever since.  I have a pretty intense sweet tooth, so part of my infatuation stems from the ability baking gives me to indulge in whatever dessert I can whip up, but I also love the scientific aspect of it all.  There are so many similarities between what I do in the lab all day and what I do when I'm making a batch of chocolate chip cookies (perhaps my all time favorite cookie... I collect chocolate chip cookie recipes like some women collect shoes).  Add A to B, mix, heat for 30 minutes, chill, and serve.  Though what I do in the lab is not nearly as tasty, or as fattening.  And since baking is such a science I understand that once you start tweaking the ingredients you'll begin to mess with the outcomes.  Thus, I rarely alter recipes.  I stick to instructions faithfully and if I don't like a result I toss the recipe out and look for a new one.  But I recently started tweaking a muffin recipe and after several batches I've developed it into one that I'm quite proud of.

It started with a bran muffin recipe from the Fiber One website. Their recipe uses crushed up Fiber One cereal and two containers of vanilla yogurt.  I loved the muffins, but I wasn't thrilled with having to crush up cereal and buy individual yogurt containers for each batch of muffins.  So I started tweaking.  Switching out wheat bran for the cereal and plain yogurt for the vanilla.  But then I needed to up the sweetener and play around with flour proportions.  And after a couple weeks I've settled on a recipe that I really like and is all my own!  I love these muffins because they're hearty, thanks to the bran and ground flax seed, with just a little indulgence, thanks to the chocolate chips.  I have one for breakfast every morning with a big glass of milk, and I also eat one as a pre-workout snack.  So, without further ado:

Chocolate Chip Bran Muffins

1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil
12 oz plain nonfat yogurt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup wheat bran
1/4 cup ground flax seed (optional)
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup chocolate chips

- Whisk together the egg, oil, yogurt, brown sugar, and vanilla.
- Stir in the flours, bran, flax seed, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips until just combined.  Be careful not to over mix or the muffins will become tough.
- Portion out batter into muffin tins sprayed with cooking spray. (I usually get 16-17 muffins per batch.)
- Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.
- Immediately remove from muffin tins and let cool on a wire rack.

Nutritional information: (per muffin) 169 calories, 7.6 g fat (2.7 g saturated fat), 22 g carbohydrates, 2.5 g fiber, 4.2 g protein