Brain Muffins: Where Everything's Good for Your Brain

REDONKULOUSLY DELICIOUS MUFFINS It's about time. Children wail, adults connive, baby's coo generously, the elderly sweet talk, men slather on compliments. It's all in an attempt to get my Brain Muffin recipe. Why? Cause they're so tantalizingly amazing, irresistably delicious, and impossible to eat just one. I mean, who would have thought that a (sorry Brain Muffin) rather dull-looking, healthy-seeming, bran muffinish muffin would be...tasty?

But the Brain Muffin is fooling you. It's super dense, moist, chewey, and chocolately pumpkin delicious. I have yet to meet a human being with normally working taste buds who has not raved about these muffins...or resisted eating a second muffin immediately after inhaling the first. Well, here you have it!

NON-DRY INGREDIENTS

• 1 small can of pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling for goodness sake)
• 3/4 cup of olive oil (light in flavor) or use a mix of olive oil and yogurt
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar (or use Splenda or applesauce)

DRY INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup quaker minute oats
• 1/2 cup wheat bran
• 1/4 cup flax seed meal or whole flax seeds (if you're like me and go for a nice, smooth, non-chunky texture, you'll choose the flax seed meal)
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup 2% milk (or skim to save calories and fat)
• 1/2 cup dark or semi-sweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

• Mix together oil and pumpkin, then add sugar. Set that aside.
• In a separate bowl, mix all dry ingredients together with a wisk.
• Mix the dry ingredients slowly into the wet, adding gradually while mixing with a spatula.

NOW FOR THE BEST PART!

• Add 1 tsp of vanilla and ¼ cup of 2% milk to the mix.
• Stir.
• Add ¼ to ½ cup of Ghirardelli dark or semi-sweet chocolate chips.
• Mix.

DON'T FORGET TO BAKE 

Now find your muffin tins, spray generously with non-stick cooking spray, and spoon in the mix. It should come out to exactly 12 muffins when using standard muffins tins. Preheat oven to 330 degrees F and bake for 35 minutes on the middle rack. Don’t go too near the bottom or they will get dry and then the above claims of moist, dense, chewey Brain Muffins will be defunct. Remove promptly when your buzzer yells kindly at you to do so and cool. Eat them right out of the oven when they are piping hot or after they have been refrigerated and they are cool. Mmm...with a glass of milk. That's my favorite.

EAT, Tina, EAT!

And then report back when you feel your brain gaining more brain power...
(Recipe compliments of Mrs. Tiffany Wismer)