Cindy's Cafe Bran Muffins Makes 3 dozen 2-inch muffins. from Cindy's Cafe and Catering, Mt Vernon, Ill. (from Ford Motor Travel Magazine) 1 cup boiling water 1 cup All-Bran Cereal 1 cup raisins 1/3 cup sugar + (¼ cup molasses - ¼ cup honey) ½ cup Crisco 2 eggs 2½ cups sifted all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 2½ cups baking soda 2 cups buttermilk 2 cups 40% Bran Flakes Cereal 1 cup pecan pieces Mix water, All-Bran and Raisins in a bowl and let stand. Cream suger and Crisco in large mixer bowl. Add Eggs one at a time. Sift Flour and Baking Soda together. Add alternately with Buttermilk. Mix well. Add Bran Flakes and Pecan Pieces. Stir in the Bran and Raisin mixture. Fill greased muffin tins 2/3 full. Bake in a preheated 400o oven for approximately 20 minutes. Note: For muffins to rise properly, they must be baked in a thoroughly heated 400o oven. For Cake (12 x 9 pan) start at 400, then reduce to 350. Bake for 55 to 60 min., or until center of cake test indicates. Personal Note: When I make this recipe I use 3 cups of All-Bran (instead of the 1 cup) and eliminate the 2 cups Bran Flakes entirely.

You know there are certain things that you can sub in recipes and no one will know....but for a little different taste. Doesn't effect the tecture or size or much else. Things like chopped dried apricots for raisins or for dried peaches, pecans for walnuts, milk and a bit of lemon for sour cream....but with something like this....I wouldn't try it. If, as I suspect, it turns out to be a dense soggy "thing"....you will have wasted almond flour, tangelo juice, cottage cheese and about 3 eggs. I would save the experimentation for something where the outcome is more promising and the potential for high dollar waste isn't so great. But....if the prospect of tossing all that stuff isn't an issue....then go for it and perhaps we all can learn.

Cake mixing methods: -Shortened cakes utilize solid shortening (fat/sugar creaming method). -Unshortened cakes (sponge or foam cakes) are made with beaten egg whites for air/leavening. -Chiffon cakes are a hybrid of shortened and unshortened cakes where the fat is usually from vegetable oil and egg yolks and is combined with the foamed egg whites, cake flour, and leavening agents. In cakes, solid fats contribute to tenderness, volume, moisture, and flavor. These attributes are distinctly associated with solid fats because vegetable oil doesn't entrap air during creaming. Using vegetable oil where butter is called for will result in decreased volume and a "harsh" crumb. As with all cooking/baking rules, there is ALWAYS some exception, and this exception is olive oil, because it contains natural emulsifiers to make cakes more tender and moist. You may have better luck using a light olive oil. Vegetable oil coats the flour proteins preventing them from adhearing to water. This reduces the gluten formation and leaves more water in the batter (gluten absorbs hydration). So if you use oil in a recipe that calls for butter, I wouldn't use it 1:1. I'd use less oil. The key... not to add too much oil or the cake becomes too heavy and compact (I'm thinking of my MILs OILY 5-pound pumpkin bread recipe LOL - while my favorite banana bread recipe only uses 3 T. of oil - but I digress). Air bubbles aren't easily incorporated into oil as they are butter. You are now stuck with only the leavening agent remaining to create air bubbles by using oil instead of butter - the chemical leaveners (soda/baking powder) - OR - physical leavening from whipping air into the batter (via egg whites). So if you substitute oil for butter, you may want to whip the egg whites and add them to the batter to aid in adding air bubbles to the batter. When making muffins, the traditional muffin-making method the steps are geared to minimize mixing so that you don't develop gluten. In traditional muffins, the fat is most often in liquid form - both melted solid fats or liquid fats (cooking oil). This is mixed with the other wet ingredients and then added all at once to the dry ingredients. In a muffin recipe where the fat is solid and you use traditional cake methods - creaming the fat with the sugar - the resulting muffin will have a more cake-like texture. HOW fat is incorporated will create different textures, and all the time the fat plays a BIG roll in minimizing gluten development. You can also aid gluten development up front by using low-gluten flours - something lower in gluten than all-purpose flour - a southern all-purpose like White Lily or Martha White will make the crumb more tender than all-purpose flour. To off-set the additional gluten in all-purpose flour (say if you use a higher-gluten all-purpose flour like King Arthur or Hudson Cream - a Kansas brand of flour) is to add a little more fat so you don't get a tough crumb. How much you beat the batter will also alter the texture. I NEVER use an electric mixer when adding the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients. I use a Danish Dough Whisk. Keep the mixer for creaming fat/sugar. Different mixing methods will get your different kinds of cakes. What you are trying to get done is to incorporate all the ingredients as well as the maximum number of air cells - which you need for vulume and texture. Some pitfalls...the temperature of the butter, eggs, and the mixing bowl; insufficient creaming; insufficient blending of the baking powder and flour; developing too much gluten/using flour that is too high in gluten.... Cake is a ratio of ingredients one to another, mess with the ratio by altering one or two ingredients and you have to adjust it someplace else to compensate. If you are working with "high-ratio" cakes that contain more sugar than flour, then you have a whole different set of "rules" to consider. In her book, "Baking 9-1-1", Sarah Phillips mentions making a cake recipe over 100 times until she made a reduced-fat version of it she was satisfied with. -Grainlady

Shambo, yes you can sub applesauce or oil or the above things Lou mentioned..you may just get a slightly different texture though..but it will taste fine.