Blueberry Bran Muffins

This spring my maternal grandmother, and last of my four grandparents, passed away. Fortunately, four years ago she had the foresight to give each of her children and grandchildren a small photo album STUFFED full of her recipes, as a Christmas gift. She wrote a lot of the recipes herself on 4x6 cards, and my aunt and cousin (that I know of- maybe others helped too) wrote some of them. Copies were made so that each recipe didn't have to be handwritten twenty-something times, but its really cool to have Grandmom's recipes in Grandmom's handwriting. *grin

This recipe for bran muffins is one such recipe. I knew it made "like a million" muffins, which meant I could make one batch and freeze it, providing warm breakfasts for a few months to come.

This batch actually made 67 muffins, which is really a ton, LOL. They are sooo yummy straight out of the oven! And they're almost as good reheated in the microwave, straight from the freezer!

Ingredients & Instructions

2 cups Kellogg's All Bran cereal

2 cups boiling water 

Mix these together in small bowl and set aside.

In a very large bowl mix

2 1/2 cups sugar

1 generous cup Shortening (I used margarine because I discovered my shortening was rancid)

5 cups Flour

1 1/2 tsp Salt

4 tsp Baking Soda

4 Eggs

1 qt Buttermilk* (well shaken)

Then add small bowl of soaked All Bran and mix well.

Add 4 cups dry All Bran and 1 can drained blueberries. Fold in carefully and scoop mixture into sprayed muffin tin. Bake at 375* for 20 mins.

The notes say to call my mother if you have any questions on the recipe. That made me laugh!

* My parents never bought buttermilk, ever. When a recipe calls for it, my mom would sour the milk by putting the required baking soda into the milk, as soon as she started the recipe so it had time to turn sour. My husband follows Alton Brown's advice on just about everything, and he sours milk with apple cider vinegar. So when I made these, I poured my quart of milk and added 4 tbsp of the vinegar and let it sit while I mixed everything else together. It works just fine!