Breakfast is always the hardest meal at my house. My kids love a big breakfast of grits, eggs, bacon and biscuits. The problem is they prefer it at about 11 a.m. On a day-to-day basis getting your family to eat breakfast can be a challenge, after all it is hard to decide if a piece of toast is worth getting up 15 minutes earlier for. One solution to that is muffins. They are easily made in batches and frozen. Then you always have something to pop in the oven to heat up. I’ve cut them in half when frozen and laid them on top of the toaster to thaw before.

The most important thing to remember about muffins is to mix them with a light hand and only as much as you need to incorporate the ingredients. Over mixing muffins makes them tough, large crumbed and have very peaked tops instead of the lovely rounded top ones you see in a bakery.

This first recipe is what I consider to be the best bran muffin recipe in the world. The reason being it tastes good! These muffins freeze up wonderfully and are perfect to have on hand. I got this recipe from a class I went to with Shirley Corriher, you have probably seen her on the Alton Brown show. She is a food scientist from Atlanta and when she wrote this recipe on the board it was accompanied by an hour long discussion about the part that each ingredient played in making these muffins taste great and texturally delicious. Baking is nothing but chemistry and these are proof that with the right compounds your bran muffins can actually taste good instead of like sawdust.

Shirley’s Bran Muffins

2 cups All Bran Cereal

2 cups oat bran

2 cups all-purpose flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup honey

1 1/2 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup canola oil

4 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla

Heat the oven to 375 degrees and spray your muffin tins with Pam. Process the All-Bran cereal in a food processor for about 30 seconds. Add all other ingredients and pulse just until mixed. Fill the muffin tins about 3 /4 full and bake for about 20 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes before removing from the pan.

These next muffins are not as healthy as the bran muffins, they are more like carrot cake muffins, but I love them. As you can tell from the proportions the recipe makes a lot of muffins. I begged this recipe out of a bakery in Houston, and they made a double recipe every morning of these yummy jewels. I go ahead and make the entire recipe and freeze muffins. I don’t like to grate carrots so I prefer to do a large batch and be done with it.

Morning Glory Muffins

12 cups flour

7 1/2 cups sugar

3 tablespoons baking soda

3 tablespoons cinnamon

3 teaspoons salt

3 cups raisins (I use dried cranberries)

3 cups shredded coconut

3 cups grated carrots

18 eggs

6 cups vegetable or canola oil

3 Tablespoons vanilla

Mix flour, sugar, soda, cinnamon, salt in a very large bowl. Add the raisins or cranberries, carrots and coconut. Stir well and break up all lumps of fruits and coat it all with flour. In another bowl lightly beat the eggs by hand, and mix in the oil and vanilla. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix only enough to blend. Bake in paper lined muffin tins until golden brown.

This batter stores well in the refrigerator, but I go ahead and bake them all at once, let them cool and put them in large Ziploc bags in the freezer.

Christina Hall writes a weekly column in The Democrat. She can be reached at christina.hall@natchezdemocrat.com.