While muffins are my specialty, they also happen to be my Grandma Gloria’s favorite thing to bake. Before my Grandfather passed away a few years ago, she used to always bake him batches of muffins for snacking. They were two peas in a pod. We still miss Grandpa to this day, but remember him through little things and by keeping his memory alive.
My Grandfather’s absolute favorite muffins were banana nut, but he also LOVED my Grandma’s famous healthy bran muffins. I asked her for the recipe a few years ago, shared it on the blog, so you know I had to bring them back for you. They’re tall, hearty, full of flavor, and the ultimate muffin to spread with whatever topping you like. Grandpa loved honey and butter, but I adore peanut butter and jam.
For those of you who don’t know the infamous Gloria, she’s my wonderful spirited, sassy grandmother. She’s Puerto Rican, so much of the food she cooks tends to be Spanish inspired. My Nana (Great Grandmother) taught her how to cook everything from scratch when she was a young girl. Ever since then, it’s been one of her favorite things to do.
When my Grandma isn’t making homemade pozole, empanadas, and arroz con pollo, she is usually baking muffins the size of my face. Seriously give her a half hour and she’ll make you an incredible meal, but provide her with a couple of hours and you’ll have a masterpiece to eat. She treats every meal she makes with affection, putting the utmost love into her creations — it’s an extraordinary quality. She pours her soul into stews and she throws her spice for life into spanish rice. Cooking is like an expression to her, and everything is always made with love.
Fall in love with nutritious bran muffins
I mean, what could be more classic and nostalgic than a soft, fluffy bran muffin? Not only are they delicious and baked with love, but they also pack:
- 5g of fiber
- Nearly 5g of protein
- And 10% of your daily iron needs!
Ingredients in these healthy bran muffins
You’re going to LOVE all of the nutritious, wholesome ingredients in these bran muffins. Plus, they’re incredibly easy to make. Here’s what you’ll need to make them:
- Flour: you’ll need whole wheat pastry flour or white whole wheat flour to give the muffins their perfect fluffy texture.
- Wheat bran: what makes these bran muffins, of course, is wheat bran! Some bran muffin recipes call for bran flakes, but wheat bran keeps them super hearty and filled with fiber. I think oat bran would work well, too.
- Applesauce: this helps to add moisture to the muffins.
- Eggs: you’ll need 2 eggs to help the muffins bake up properly.
- Milk: feel free to use any milk you’d like! I like to use unsweetened vanilla almond milk.
- Sweetener: we’re sweetening these brand muffins with brown sugar and the flavor queen — blackstrap molasses.
- Coconut oil: I love using virgin coconut oil for flavor and to keep this recipe dairy-free.
- Baking staples: you’ll need both baking powder and baking soda, plus cinnamon and salt.
- Apple cider vinegar: the apple cider vinegar helps to activate the baking powder and soda to give the muffins extra fluff.
Fall in love with blackstrap molasses
I didn’t realize how nutritious blackstrap molasses was until I started using it a few years ago. In fact, it’s the healthiest form of molasses and contains the most vitamins and nutrients. Plus, the blackstrap molasses adds so much delicious flavor to these muffins — they almost taste like gingerbread muffins. Did you know that 1 tablespoon of molasses provides nearly 20% of your daily iron needs + a good amount of potassium and magnesium? I’m NOW obsessed.
Optional ingredient swaps
I highly recommend sticking to the recipe as written to get the best results possible, but there are a few ingredient swaps that will work out well:
- For the wheat bran: I think that oat bran would also work well in place of the wheat bran.
- For the brown sugar: coconut sugar is a great swap.
- For the coconut oil: feel free to use melted vegan butter or, if you’re not dairy-free, regular melted butter.
- For the applesauce: I think using mashed banana would also work well. Just be sure to measure it to be 1/2 cup.
Can I use a different flour?
While I cannot suggest a gluten-free alternative to the whole wheat pastry flour, I do think you could substitute it with all-purpose flour. You may need to add a few extra tablespoons of regular flour for additional density.
Can I make them vegan?
Sure! Feel free to swap the 2 eggs for 2 flax eggs. Learn how to make flax eggs here.
Have fun with delicious mix-ins
I LOVE jazzing up these bran muffins with yummy mix-ins! Here are some things you can add to make them your own:
Don’t forget to top them with a little butter or your fav nut butter on top for a super healthy filling snack.
Want to make mini muffins?
I love making mini muffins for my littles to nosh on for their afternoon snacks. Here’s how to do it:
- Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F, and make the batter as directed.
- Pour the batter into a mini muffin tin with mini liners. I also recommend spraying the liners with nonstick cooking spray!
- Bake the muffins for 9 to 14 minutes. Mine are usually done around 12 minutes!
Storing & freezing tips
- To store: place these bran muffins in an airtight glass container or reusable silicone bag at room temperature for one day, then I recommend storing them in the refrigerator. Feel free to warm them up in the microwave before eating.
- To freeze: allow the muffins to cool completely, then put them in an airtight container or reusable silicone bag and freeze for up to 3 months. Once ready to reheat, you can thaw at room temperature, or heat up in the microwave in 30 second intervals.
Our fav tools for baking muffins
Don’t forget to check out all of our favorite kitchen essentials.
More healthy muffin recipes to try
- Honey Cinnamon Walnut Banana Muffins
- Cranberry Orange Muffins
- Outrageously Good Pumpkin Protein Muffins
- Healthier Blueberry Greek Yogurt Muffins
- ABC Muffins (apple, banana, carrot muffins!)
Get all of my muffin recipes here!
I hope you love these bran muffins and bake them for someone you care about. If you make this recipe, be sure to rate the recipe below and leave a comment below!
Ambitious Kitchen
Cookbook
125 Ridiculously Good For You, Sometimes Indulgent, and Absolutely Never Boring Recipes for Every Meal of the Day
Grandma's Healthy Bran Muffins
Ingredients
- Dry Ingredients:
- 1 cup (54g) wheat bran
- 1 ½ cups (180g) whole wheat pastry flour or white whole wheat flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 ½ tsp cinnamon
- Wet ingredients:
- ¼ cup (53g) brown sugar (or sub coconut sugar)
- ¼ cup (84g) blackstrap molasses
- ½ cup (125g) unsweetened applesauce
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- ¾ cup (180g) unsweetened vanilla almond milk (or milk of choice)
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- ⅓ cup (75g) melted coconut oil (or melted butter or vegan butter)
- Optional mix-ins suggestions if you like:
- ½ cup (80g) raisins
- ¾ cup (113g) fresh or frozen blueberries
- ½ cup (56g) chopped walnuts
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a 12 cup muffin tin with only 10 liners and spray the inside of them with nonstick cooking spray -- DO NOT SKIP THIS.
- In a separate large bowl mix together dry ingredients: wheat bran, whole wheat pastry flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.
- In a large bowl mix together brown sugar, molasses, applesauce, eggs, almond milk, apple cider vinegar until well combined, smooth and creamy. Add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix with a spatula until just combined. Stir in melted and cooled coconut oil (or butter), mixing again until just combined. Stir in any mix-ins you'd like.
- Divide batter evenly into 10 muffin liners and bake for 15-20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Cool muffins for 5 minutes then remove and transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling. Muffins are best served warm with a little butter on top.
Recipe Notes
Nutrition
Recipe by: Monique Volz // Ambitious Kitchen | Photography by: Eat Love Eats
This post was originally published on March 26th, 2018, and republished on March 12th, 2023. The recipe was updated on January 20th, 2026, and republished on February 21st, 2026.
Made with a few swaps for what I had on-hand: was out of bran & used crushed up fiber one cereal that I soaked in the almond milk for 10 mins. Also used 50/50 whole wheat & AP flours & unsulphured molasses. Spooned them into the tin & then remembered I forgot to add oil- dumped the batter out of the liners back into the bowl & folded in canola/olive oil combo & walnuts. They still came out great! Tender & moist at 15 mins. I overfilled the cups & they puffed up tall but still filled 12 liners.
Thank you for this wonderful recipe which produced the most tasty and moist bran muffins I have ever enjoyed. I followed the recipe exactly as given but did add 1/2 cup of raisins and they turned out perfectly. I like the addition of black strap molasses and applesauce and the minimal amount of brown sugar. These will be my absolute go-to muffins whenever I crave bran muffins. I initially searched the grocery stores for them- but wow was I ever disappointed when I read the ingredients- awful and so unhealthy. Your recipe was easy to follow and didn’t take long to prepare. Thank you again. Also they actually were even better the next day! Heated about 20 or so seconds in the microwave and added a dab of butter and YUMMY!!! Blessings everyone!
Amazing! So happy you found these!
Love love love this recipe!! It’s on my repeat make list! I usually use wheat bran but this time I had run out and found oat bran. I also put about 1/4cup Just Ingredients plain protein powder. Also added pecans, raisins and dark chocolate chips & coconut. I love all the textures!
Perfect! So glad you enjoyed (and love those mix-ins!)
A very easy recipe to follow. I used chopped ripe apple instead of applesauce and it turned out perfectly 😍 Added chopped walnuts too for some crunch
Perfect! Glad you enjoyed!
These are my families favorite muffins. Tonight I got the idea to stick some left over batter in mini waffle cookers I have and they came out amazing! Absolutely perfect for making waffles too apparently! Healthy “eggo” waffles! I will be doing this again to freeze for my kids!
That sounds amazing! I’ll have to try that next time 🙂
Couldn’t find whole wheat pastry flour so I took a chance and used plain whole wheat flour. I think mine are a little denser than yours appear to be but they’re really fantastic muffins! I told my kiddos they were gingerbread flavored and they’re gobbling them up! Thank you so much for such a wonderful recipe.
Feel free to try all-purpose flour next time, and they may come out a bit lighter! I’m glad they still turned out beautifully!
I used pastry whole wheat flour, wheat bran and whole milk following everything else as written and they were perfect! My whole family including my mother and granny loved them. I’m glad to have found a healthy muffin with good serving of fiber and iron. Thanks for the wonderful recipe!
Amazing! So glad they were a hit!
I had to sub a lot of ingredients to make these gf/wheat-free (and to not. have to buy a different molasses), and thank goodness it worked. I used oat bran (155 g + 25 g of almond flour for texture) and Cup4Cup (210 g). I used Grandma’s regular old unsulphured molasses and coconut sugar instead of brown sugar so they’d be a little less sweet. My add-in was a 1/2 c of pecan pieces.
They’re incredibly delicious.
Some notes for fellow GF or WF people: I was fully prepared for these to turn out poorly with all the substitutions. Luckily, I had a brain fart and misread the per-cup weight on the oat bran, which resulted in me doubling the amount. I decided that, in the name of texture, I should scale the bran back by about a quarter cup and add almond flour. This was a lucky mistake because oat bran is not as absorbent as wheat bran, so I indeed needed more to make it work. (Again, I was wholly prepared for a failure and to keep trying to get this right because I didn’t know how much oat bran I would need.) With the added bulk, I got 12 robust muffins that baked perfectly in 15 minutes.
They’re very hearty, lightly sweet, and wonderfully bran-nutty. It’s been AGES since I had a bran muffin, which I loved before I was diagnosed with a wheat allergy in my 20s. This is a delightful and weirdly nostalgic treat.
Thanks for the recipe and inspiration!
Amazing! I’m glad those swaps worked out well, and thank you for your substitution notes!
Made as written, 5 STARS, absolutely!! Great tip to spray the wrappers!
Such a great snack! Glad you love these!
I make these for my parents who are in their 70’s. They absolutely LOVE them! I use Splenda brown sugar because they both have diabetes and I add walnuts and raisins to the muffins. They freeze and reheat beautifully. Thank you for a wonderful recipe.
So happy to hear that! Perfect cozy breakfast or snack for them 🙂
I love how easy these muffins are to make and how yummy they are. I couldn’t find wheat bran, so I swapped it with oat bran. I also swapped brown sugar for coconut sugar. This is the second time making these and I didn’t have applesauce so I used Greek yogurt, and they were still delicious. It wasn’t as sweet but I added raisins for extra sweetness and pecans for the crunch. Yummy! 😋
Perfect! So glad those swaps worked out well!
I brought these muffins to an event. They were delicious. I did bloom the cinnamon and used melted butter. Several women asked me for the recipe.
Perfect! Glad they were a hit!
These are super yummy & moist. I used Italian flour with less gluten and did 200 grams instead & they turned out perfect. I made some mini for the toddler and regular for us. I added 80 grams of raisins after making about 10 minis without. Yumm!
Amazing! Glad they were a hit!
I used a 12 muffin pan as indicated, had way too much batter left after filling 10 cups so used a 7×7″ pyrex to cook the rest and it came out pretty good! I added both walnuts and blueberrie.
They are supposed to be larger muffins and they really puff up so you should fill all the way to the top. This recipe has been tested over 10x with a standard muffin pan so we know it works perfectly! 🙂
These turned out really good even with my mistakes and changes. Firt of all, I totally forgot to put in the coconut oil in (I was going to use butter). I did swap out the applesauce with pumpkin since that is what I had on hand. I also reduced the baking powder to 1 tsp since I thought a tablespoon would be too much. I will definitely make these again, next time with the butter and I will try it with blueberries. Thank you for the recipe!
I’m glad those swaps still worked out! Such a great snack 🙂
These are great! I added raisins and walnuts for some extra goodness. The texture is very nice!
Love that! Glad you enjoyed 🙂
I’ve tried many different bran muffin recipes and none have been satisfying, but I knew I could stop looking the first time I made this recipe and tasted it for the first time. I’ve made this recipe multiple times and love it. Thank you for sharing it with us!!
So happy you gave this one a try! My all-time favs 🙂
HELP PLEASE…Just about to add the Baking Powder BUT HOLY SHNICKIES…1 Tablespoon of baking powder seems like a lot. Is that possibly a misprint or shall
I continue??
Looking like a Fabulous recipe!
Hi! The recipe is correct as written!
My rating would be more like 4.5. They were tasty, but rather dense. I’m not vegan, so I used eggs and real milk, and butter for the oil. I love coconut oil in general, but often don’t like it in muffins. I could not find whole wheat pastry flour, so I did use white whole wheat.
The main reason for my lower than 5 stars is because I gave them to 2 friends, who have been my bran muffin tasters all winter, and they tasted something bitter in them, I don’t know what that could be. I myself didn’t taste any bitterness, nor did my husband. I’ve used the same fresh bottle of molasses for all of them, so I don’t think it’s the molasses.
Just by chance, I saw these rated quite well in the Pancake Princess Bran Muffin Bake-off, AFTER I made them myself.
It’s nice to have a recipe that doesn’t call for ingredients like buttermilk, which I don’t always have. With this one, I can make bran muffins without planning ahead, now that I have the white whole wheat flour.
I’m not sure what bitterness your friends might be tasting in here, but I’m glad you and your husband enjoyed!
I really would love to make these ASAP, but I don’t have bran on hand. Think flax meal would would sub?
Because they’re bran muffins they really do need oat brand or wheat bran! Flax meal has a different texture, so I wouldn’t recommend it.
Grandma’s know best! They are easy to put together and very tasty with a respectable amount of fibre. Thank you for the recipe … it is now my go to bran muffin recipe to make.
They really do! Glad you enjoyed 🙂
Excellent recipe! Very bran-forward, great texture. I want to have breakfast, not cake! I couldn’t find white whole wheat pastry flour, so used King Arthur white whole wheat flour. I bought it just for this recipe, and was glad it I did. It helped the texture to be lighter, versus the plain whole wheat flour recipe I tried last week. (I’m on a mission to find the best bran muffin). The store did not have blackstrap molasses: I used regular dark molasses
I’m not vegan, I used whole dairy milk. I used melted butter, as the coconut oil I tried on the muffins I made last week seemed to make them too dense.
As another reviewer suggested, I increased the amount of raisins and cinnamon.
Thanks for this terrific recipe!
I’m so glad you loved these, Linnea!
I chose this recipe just because I didn’t have buttermilk on hand, and all the other recipes I found needed it. Then it got too late to make it, and I went to the store the next day and bought buttermilk. But I felt invested in trying this recipe anyway, even though it “looked weird” to me, with the vinegar. So I bought the white whole wheat flour too. I could not find white whole wheat flour pastry flour, though I was in a large grocery store that had many brands. I had trouble finding white whole wheat flour too – eventually I read the back label on King Arthur GOLDEN whole wheat flour, and discovered that is made from white wheat versus red wheat. So if anyone else is looking, see if you can find that. I had no idea until I started to research it, that “WHITE wheat” is a different cultivar than “RED wheat”, which most whole wheat flour is made from.
I read all the reviews first. I doubled the raisins, used unsalted butter, not coconut oil (the last time I used coconut oil the muffins were too heavy) I used regular molasses, not black strap.
I was VERY pleasantly surprised when I tasted the muffins! Very light and fluffy, for a bran muffin. I’m impressed to find a recipe that uses all whole wheat, versus part refined white flour. I think that “white whole wheat” is the key. From now on, it’s the only wheat flour I will use in my muffins and quick breads.
I’ve been on a search for the perfect breakfast bran muffin for over a year. This is the closest yet. Thank you!
Thank you so much, Linnea! I just recently made these again and also love how light and fluffy they are. Glad you enjoyed 🙂
Are you sure it’s 1 TBSP of baking powder?
Hi Sharon! Yes I’m positive, I just made them again 3x this past month to make sure the recipe was still just as fabulous 🙂
Made these today & loved them. I did do some swapping of things, mincemeat for applesauce as I had leftover, buttermilk for almond milk & lots of raisins since I love them. Defiantly would make them again.
Love that you modified a bit and they still worked out perfectly for you! Woo!
Best bran muffins I’ve ever had. The molasses makes them taste amazing. They rose up nice and were moist. Thank you for sharing!
So happy to hear that! One of my all-time favs 🙂
Cozy perfect muffins! I used a cup of wheat germ instead of wheat bran because that’s what I had on hand and they turned out great. I will definitely make these again 🙂
I’m glad that worked out well! Such a great snack 🙂