Cranberry bran muffins

Vegan cranberry bran muffins

This recipe is adapted from one in an unknown magazine that I clipped out years ago. It adapted easily to being made vegan. I first made these muffins years ago, and recently found the recipe again (lost amongst my rather large collection of clippings, papers and such like). An old friend, rediscovered!

date syrup

The original recipe called for fresh blueberries, but I like to make them with dried cranberries. Probably pretty much any dried or fresh fruit could be used. They are moist and delicious and just sweet enough. Mr Thrifty eats these with a big smile on his face, and says they are his favourite muffins.

The egg replacer I use is Orgran No Egg, but when I lived on the other side of the pond, I used Ener-G Egg Replacer, so I know that either one will work.

I didn’t have any molasses, so I used date syrup from ASDA. It worked great!


British       American
    powdered egg replacer equivalent to 2 eggs    
250ml   soya milk   1 cup
125ml   mild vegetable oil   1/2 cup
60ml   molasses or date syrup   1/4 cup
110g   packed brown sugar   1/2 cup
90g   wheat bran   1-1/2 cups
180g   plain (all-purpose) flour   1-1/2 cups
2 teaspoons   baking powder   2 teaspoons
3/4 teaspoon   salt   3/4 teaspoon
1/2 teaspoon   baking soda   1/2 teaspoon
120g   dried cranberries   1 cup

1. Preheat oven to 200C (400F). Grease a muffin tin, or use muffin liners.

1. In a large mixing bowl, add water to the powdered egg replacer according to the package directions for the equivalent of two eggs. Whisk mixture together until foamy. Then whisk in soya milk, oil, molasses (or date syrup) and sugar until well blended.

2. Stir in bran and let stand for 5 minutes.

3. In a small bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Add to the liquid mixture, and fold gently until just combined. Fold in cranberries.

4. Spoon into greased or paper-lined muffin tin, filling just to the top.

5. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, rotating tin halfway through, until muffins are firm to the touch.

Makes 12 muffins.

8 Comments

  1. Date syrup is an amazing sweetener, I adore it. Thank you very much for the recipe, the muffin looks wonderful.

  2. Mmmmm Date Syrup, like the sound of that!

  3. Innnnnnteresting…date syrup.

    You have such creative eats! Brilliant! Brilliant!

    All bow down to the Queen of Creativity:D

    Feed me!

  4. Never heard of date syrup – what’s in it? Sounds better than other sweeteners… maybe because I love dates! We make muffins all the time, so will try these. Mainly I just use the old ground-flax-seed-and-water for egg replacer and nobody is the wiser 🙂

  5. Claire — I’d never heard of date syrup either until I saw it at the store. The label says:

    Ingredients: juice of dates. 100% natural.
    Fruit percentage: 200g of dates per 100g of date syrup.
    Total percentage of sugar: 62%.

    If you love dates, you’d LOVE this syrup!

    I’ve used flax seed goop as egg replacement too, but I find the powder more convenient (I don’t have to get the blender dirty to grind the flaxseeds. Yes, sometimes I’m lazy.)

  6. In The Tightwad Gazette (if memory serves me well) Amy says a tablespoon of soya flour and two tablespoons water are a replacement for an egg.

    If I am teaching my grandmother to suck eggs – I apologise!

  7. This date syrup is made in Basra,Iraq
    We call it debis here
    Can I use it instead of black treacle??

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