Bodybuiding Banana Bran Date Muffins

Bodybuilding changes a person. By no means am I the ultimate resource or guide on the subject, but it is something I love and cannot imagine being without. Lifting weights is about as natural to me as breathing and eating. For those of you who have never done resistance training, I can compare it to baking and cooking. Do you know that feeling you get when you spent hours on something and it's finally finished? That sense of accomplishment and pride you feel? It's similar to that. I have spent onwards of 4 months counting calories and dieting, pushing each workout to my fullest, and on one special day I show it off to people and have a blast. It's not about vanity, it's about challenging yourself. It's amazing.

So how does this relate to food? Well a bodybuilders friend is fiber. It fills up your stomach, it contributes to satiety, and it is good for your health. Fiber binds to cholesterol and causes you to 'get rid' of it, when you use the restroom. A great source of fiber is bran, and another is bananas. So here is a fiber filled fest of muffin... Banana Bran Date Muffins.I was going to use the recipe on the side of the Kellogg's All Bran Cereal box, but it's no longer there. What the...? It is always there. I guess this is a good thing... because it forced me to make the recipe up all on my own. It was fun doing what we do here... making stuff up. These are exactly what you want in the summer... low fat, a little sweet, and tan.


Banana Bran Date Muffins

Recipe by Adam

1 ½ cups All Brain Cereal
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
½ cup AP flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp cinnamon
Pinch of cloves
1 cup buttermilk
2 bananas, mashed
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
2 tbsp canola oil
Touch of honey
1/3 cup chopped dates

Preheat oven to 400*. Grease a 12 cup muffin tin.

In a large bowl, combine the buttermilk, egg, oil, vanilla extract, bananas and All Bran Cereal, so that the cereal has some time to soften up. After a few minutes, add chopped dates and honey and mix with a wooden spoon so that everything is incorporated.

In a small bowl, add the whole wheat pastry flour, AP flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cloves and cinnamon. Mix evenly with a spoon or whisk.

Add the flour mixture to the wet cereal mixture, and with a rubber spatula, fold the dry ingredients into batter gently and smoothly. Try not to over mix, its perfectly fine to have lumps and the batter look a bit thick and uneven. You might fold the mixture a total of 10 times.

Scoop heaping spoonfuls of batter into the muffin tin until all 12 are full to the top.

Place in the oven on the center rack and bake for 18-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean or the tops spring back. Cool in the pan for a few minutes and then onto a wire cooling.

And if you start getting stronger after eating these... nice.