Notes: I spoon my flour into the measuring cups and then level, rather than scooping and flattening down. Also I use dry measuring cup for flour and wet measuring cup for liquids.

Actually after perusing the Internet a while, I think the problem with both muffins might have been too much leavening. Both called for 1 TBLSP baking powder and in the peach muffins it imparted a bitter taste, which I attributed to old and poorly incorporated baking powder, but it also might have contributed to the gummy texture. I read online where the ratio should be 1 tsp. baking powder to 1 cup flour . . .

I also read that melted butter is not as good as softened butter creamed with sugar, which is how you do a good cake, but I didn't know if it would make that much difference. Most muffin recipes I have call for some type of vegetable oil . . . The recipe said to melt the butter.

I could skip the orange juice all together and just rely on the grated rind, but I have seen recipes that call for a bit of it, but I'm wondering if I should also add a bit of baking soda, like maybe 1/4 tsp. for the acidity? Perhaps I should spring for a bottle of triple sec, I know that kicks preserves up a notch when a couple TBLSP are added.

I am not an adventurous Baker, I go exactly by the recipe. But I wonder if you didn't hit the answer yourself. Maybe sub some baking soda for some of the baking powder. I know lemon juice and milk creates an acid where baking soda is needed, seems like the oj might have the same effect? Hope you can get it to work out, sounds good. I can see though that creaming soft butter with sugar might give more lift though. Does not seem as if there would be enough oat bran to make a difference

I would just switch and use this recipe. It is originally from GW from Debbie. It is great and has mostly the same ingredients. I did get 24 regular muffins. I also don't have a food processor, so I had to peel the apples and I use my hand grater. 1 large apple and 1 large carrot were enough to make the measure.

http://recipes.millersglenn.com/Breads/empirestatemuffins.html

This is the post on here that I found them on. I have made twice and it worked perfect both times.

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5490621/empire-state-muffins-oh-my-goodness#n=22

Oh yes Sherry, Empire State muffins are one of my all time faves and tops on the list of my GW Cooking Forum greatest hits!

Not looking at proportions, the ingredients are the same, except for the carrots. I would just toss the Land O Lake's recipe and use the one that works. You could probably omit the carrots if you didn't have any and it wouldn't make any difference. Although I like the fact that it contains carrots. I am trying to get more veggies into my veggie hating husband. He does like this muffin recipe.

Just wondering how finely the fruit was chopped? Also 2 cups of fruit seems like a lot in proportion to the flour, etc.!

And could the O.J. might be responsible as well - maybe too much acidity for that amount of baking powder?

And how fresh was the baking powder?

If you have made this recipe before and the only change you made was adding oat bran, then it's probably the bran. I just made oat bran muffins last week and they are very dense (I wanted them that way) and moist. I am not sure you could call that gummy but maybe by some people's lights you can.

It could be many things...
oat bran makes baked goods more dense.
How finely you chopped the apples....meaning more apple in a cup would make a difference
Frozen cranberries can get watery if yoju don't add them at the last minute...
And the extra sugar in the OJ didn't help either.
Next time dry dicing the apples and add the cranberries while still froxen....and you did measure a cup of cranberries and then chop, rather than chopping the berries and then measuring out a cup ful? that would make for a moist gummy muffin.

Just looking at the recipe, sub 'ing OJ for some milk will lower the fat content but not a huge amount... Oat bran sub isn't much to make a huge difference.... I thought 400F sounds a little hot for muffins and wondered whether the melted butter should be warm/cool so I found the orig recipe online. It didn't get great reviews to begin with, but the orig had a much higher fat content! It used half n half. Online LoL recipe

eta- my fav of all time is a blueberry muffin w/ oats recipe... Seems to have a perfect balance of texture and tastes great. Good even the second day, if they last that long. Lol! Lmk if you want the recipe.

I could use a new blueberry oatmeal muffin recipe, I made mine twice last summer and they turned gummy too, so I am in search of a new one. My latest blueberry muffin style is the cake-y kind like Ina Garten or Smitten Kitchen makes . . . not much in the health department though . . . although how much oats are in a muffin anyway. I just love oats though and eat them a lot. Our go-to bread is oatmeal or oat bran.

https://smittenkitchen.com/2010/08/perfect-blueberry-muffins/

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/blueberry-coffee-cake-muffins-recipe-1917173

Party_Music, I just made your muffins. They are delicious. However, when I stirred in the blueberries, the batter turned green, in places, as it baked. My husband (who hates vegetables) didn't like them. He wanted to know "what that green stuff was"? Judging by the amount of muffin on the plate, I don't think he even tasted them. LOL. Darn, I guess I will have to suffer and eat them all myself. Wink, wink.

yikes! I've never had them turn green! If I use frozen berries and let them thaw enough, then the juice will bleed and they'll turn the batter purple-ish where the juice mixes in. No idea why you'd get green. The only time I've had green occur accidentally in baking is when I added sunflower seeds to a recipe that contained baking soda. Chemical reaction. Anyone else have any ideas why they would turn green???

ETA: I use frozen blueberries all the time. I add them to the batter frozen and allow for a little more baking time.

Apparently if the acid balance isn't right then blueberries can turn green too... it's never happened to me with that recipe though.

https://www.kitchenhealssoul.com/blueberries-can-turn-green-in-your-muffins-and-thats-okay/

Oh it didn't affect the taste at all. Actually they were very pretty. He is just weird about green anything in food. if it is green he doesn't like it. He eats spaghetti sauce and loves it (It has bell peppers in it), but put a bell pepper on a pizza and he will pick it off. No spinach, asparagus, green beans, parsley, cilantro, rosemary, ect. If cooked in to where you can't see it, it is fine. If he can see it, he doesn't like it. I thought it was funny. I guess I had stirred a little too hard and mixed the juice off the berries into the batter, because you couldn't see it until they were broke open.

Fruit that has a high water content can vary quite a bit.

This past season was record breaking rain and almost all of the stone fruit rotted quickly from too much rain. The apples also were less sweet and had a lot more water in them than in better years.

Anytime I cook with apples I will cook one in a pan to see how much water it gives off. They can vary a lot. If you are going to bake an apple pie, for instance, you need to judge how much juice is going to cook out so that you know how much starch to add to the the fruit.

The tablespoon of baking powder is not that far from the usual balance. But, you did add acid with the orange juice and did not balance it with a pinch of soda. That might help.

I strongly suspect that the fruit added too much liquid to the batter.

Perhaps you might like better to use a recipe for something like the old fashioned coffee cake as your muffin batter. Many muffins are defined by a lightly moistened batter, containing oil and leavening and it is often recommended that the batter not be overly mixed.

Many of the "muffins" that are sold in coffee shops and groceries are really a cake batter type of muffin. That is quite a different thing from one that is grainy, rough and made from whole grains, seeds, nuts and oats.

I make mostly the ones that are rough and grainy and made from more nutritious elements.

I always use buttermilk in my baking and cooking. If not for the fact that hubby uses it on his cereal, I would not even have a need to buy sweet milk. Buttermilk makes the very best everything from frittatas to waffles to bread. I even used it last week to make a kind of a béchamel for a baked topping. I am strongly repulsed by uncultured milk products...........strongly. So, I have learned to tailor all of my baking and most of my cooking to use buttermilk. I do make pudding for hubby with sweet milk.

Blueberry muffins will be out of my price range for a while. This weekend at the store they varied from 3.50 to 4.00 a pound, frozen, dried and canned. We don't buy produce over 2-3 bucks a pound. They were on sale frozen local ones last week but we missed out. It's not blueberry season so it would have to have been frozen anyway. I made a ton of blueberry jam but finally used it up last month.

I have two bags of cranberries in the freezer though.

You would never be buying blueberries here then, because $4/lb would be a great sale price for us :-). I admit I’m often surprised when I hear how cheap your food prices are in the US.

$4/lb would be a great sale price here even when blueberries are in season, and I'm in the US where they grow.