At Costco, you used to be able to get massive raisin bran muffins and these were a staple until about two weeks ago when I interrupted the bakers in the back to ask them when we were to expect the bran muffins to start filling the huge aluminum racks that were packed with all kinds of other muffins. No offense to those tempting treats but I needed a muffin suited for breakfast, my kind of breakfast. Not the kind of breakfast suited to doing 500 laps around the parking lot or so I thought. Much to my dismay, the baker yelled back that they are being discontinued. "But! These! are the ONLY ones you don't need to go for counseling after you guiltily consume one all by yourself," I whined back rather loudly and with a little more force than perhaps I wanted. (I was hungry!) The Baker came closer to me and said, "you know... none of these muffins are really all that good for you, if you know what I mean." I scowled deeply, refusing to face the truth of the matter. "But still... that's lame... right?" I meekly responded. She just smiled and winked, knowingly.
And so, what I had known all along, finally gripped me by the belly pretty tight... I had to make them myself, like everything else in life; if I wanted to really KNOW that bran muffins were as good for me as I suspected they really could be, then I would have to embark on this educational experience forthright.
That is how I stumbled upon Okara Mountain. One woman's need to use her heaps of Okara has led to her blog, a blog very specific to the purpose at hand. I've been to Okara Mountain, figuratively speaking. I have my own Mountain and I too, feel rather guilty adding this healthy bi-product of soy milk to the compost heap. Ah, the pressures to be green really do weigh ya down sometimes, I mused with my own knowing grin... I could recognize a fellow Okie from Soy-Land. I, too, have a burning need to use my Okara since we make our own soy milk and so far, I've done a pretty darn good job of it. So much so, that one of my cherished bffs will look at me with a very suspicious eye when I offer her anything from my kitchen and ask, "does this have beans in it?" To which I reply even when it isn't true, "OF COURSE, dahling!" Gotta luv the leery people and of course, you gotta mess with em just a bit! And so, it dawned on me that my Craisin Okara Cereal Bread recipe was truly just a few modifications away from being a truly spectacular Okara Bran Muffin. I was so close to really tackling this Mountain; nirvana was at hand and this could just be the one recipe to get me over the proverbial Okara Hump.
Here is my rough start:
Okara from a batch of soy milk (~3 cups of "wet" Okara)
1.5 cups wheat bran
1.5 cups of Eagle Mills Unbleached White Flour MultiGrain
2 tsp vanilla
.5 cup sugar
2 tbsp molasses
.5 cup golden flax seed
1-2 cups of dried cherries or raisins, whatever floats your bran boat
1 cup of unsweetened apple sauce (that's what I forgot this morning, doh!)
1 1/8th tsp baking soda
3 3/8ths tsp baking powder (these two measurements combined equal the rising power of 3 tbsp of baking powder!)
1 stick of organic butter
1 large organic egg
Now that I write it out today, I know what I did wrong this morning. I was tired and sorta missed a key step by leaving out the apple sauce accidentally. I've worked this recipe now many times. The first, I did just like I do my Okara Cereal bread but that calls for 2 sticks of butter and 2 eggs. Great, but I thought I can surely do better cutting out more fat and using way less sugar. The recipe above reduces the 2 sticks of butter to 1 by replacing half the butter with 1 cup of apple sauce. I made my own apple sauce last weekend just to try out this theory and it totally worked. Okara itself is said to be a replacement for eggs and/or oil so I tested this theory and left out an egg, which worked just fine. Now, if I only would have followed my own recipe it would have been perfect. I haven't tried the ones from this morning yet but they don't look as full as my first few batches. I know why. I left out the 3 tsps of baking powder(got the 3/8ths in and obviously got distracted from finishing the task!) and totally forgot the apple sauce. What a dodo! I bet they'll still taste good though. We'll see tomorrow. Regardless of whether you are making soy milk and subsequent muffins in your sleep, like I obviously was doing this morning, it is still more than likely that your foray into Okara baking will not be stifled by a few glitches. Onward young Okara Soldiers!
If you try them, be a doll, post back and let me know how they turned out for you and by all means, swing by this gal's Okara Mountain blog for more awesome ideas on so many wonderful things to try with Okara! Thank you, Toontz, for being an inspiration!
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