I’m delaying the recipe I had planned to present today because this one calls for fresh peaches, which are still available locally. Everything stops for fresh peaches! When they’re in season, you’ll want to use them in as many ways as possible. My very favourite way to enjoy a peach? Fresh, out of hand, with its sweet juices dripping down my fingers and chin. Each year, that first taste of a perfectly ripe, sweet and fragrant peach is an experience that moves me like no other. But even I can eat only so many fresh peaches, and that’s when recipes like these Peach Bran Muffins provide other ways to enjoy this treasured summer fruit.

A Muffin Primer

You many have noticed that most, if not all, of my muffin recipes have certain similarities: they contain bran, they usually have some kind of fruit in them and they’re not too sweet. That’s because muffins aren’t cupcakes. Cupcakes are an indulgent treat, whereas muffins, while delicious — and it’s important that they be delicious! — fall into the category of a wholesome breakfast or snack.

So, yeah, fibre … what can I say but make those muffins work for you! Fruit adds flavour, texture and natural sweetness. This brings me to the final point, restrained sweetness: not too much sugar and making that more natural and less refined. In other words, a good muffin is what I like to call sweetly unrefined. But that’s enough about muffins in general; let’s get back to the point of this post: these Peach Bran Muffins.

Trust me, you’ll want to eat these. Luckily for you I’m going to share how to make them.

Peach Bran Muffins

These peachy muffins came about as a result of a happy accident. When I was packing for the cottage recently I decided to make up a little muffin kit: all the dry ingredients for a batch of my Oat Bran Banana Muffins pre-measured and packaged up, needing nothing more than some milk, oil and an egg when I was ready to whip them up. Except, I discovered I was out of oat bran. So, instead of a cup of that, I substituted a half cup each of wheat bran and all-purpose flour. I adjusted the amount of sugar, too, to compensate for the difference in flavour between the original oat bran and the wheat bran that was pinch hitting.

When it came time to make these muffins, I thought that since I’d already made some changes to the recipe, why not take it further and come up with something completely different from the banana version? Not only that, but a big basket of fresh peaches from the Juicy-Fruit Market was calling my name. So, I peeled and pitted two big ones — the softest, juiciest ones I could find — and roughly chopped them. Some pieces were small and some were bigger chunks of about a half inch. The smaller pieces would melt into the muffins as they were baking, adding sweet moisture, but the big pieces would stay intact, providing bursts of fresh peach flavour.

A bit of cinnamon added background warm sweetness; enough to enhance the flavour but not steal the show from the undisputed stars of these muffins, the peaches.

The result was a muffin that I’ll definitely make again when peaches are in season. Something tells me you’ll enjoy them just as much.