Healthy baking...yes there is such a thing!

I have never really enjoyed baking but recently decided to try baking some muffins. In my never-ending quest to find healthy snacks for my 4 year old, I decided to try making some bran muffins with the wheat bran that has been sitting in my fridge for quite sometime. Plus my son LOVES to help me in the kitchen and baking is a fun, easy to way to let him be my little helper. After tweaking the recipe 3 times I finally came up with some really delicious muffins that the whole family likes. I started with the recipe on the front of the Bob's Red Mill package of wheat bran, then added a few things to make it my own. I changed the sweetener from molasses to the honey/brown rice syrup mixture and it worked well to help keep them moist. I also added some pumpkin and pumpkin spice seasoning which added some nice flavor. Here it is:

Pumpkin Apple Spice Bran Muffins

1 C wheat bran (I used Bob's Red Mill, of course!)
1 1/2 C whole wheat flour
1/4 C chopped walnuts
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
3/4 C milk (they are best with regular milk, but I have used both hemp & almond milk)
1/2 C mixture of honey and brown rice syrup
2 T oil
1 egg, beaten
1/2 C unsweetened apple sauce
1/2 to 1 C canned pumpkin
1 t pumpkin spice

Stir together all dry ingredients. In another bowl, mix wet ingredients, except for apple sauce and pumpkin. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir until just moistened. Add apple sauce, pumpkin and pumpkin spice to mixture. Spoon into greased muffin tin and bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until the pull away easily from cups. Yum!