These Irish brown bread muffins have all the flavor of the traditional Irish brown bread in muffin form. Add the optional candied ginger for a nice subtle texture and bite.

For someone who doesn’t really care about St. Patrick’s Day I’m kinda pumping out a lot of “Irish” recipes this year (like this no-bake Irish Cream cheesecake) huh?

In reality though, I’ve wanted to make brown bread since visiting Ireland almost 4 years ago.

I went into that trip expecting horrible food and disgusting weather.

The weather prediction held true (to the point of almost literally being blown off the Cliffs of Moher by 50 mile an hour winds) but the food was surprisingly good throughout the trip.

Way better than Prague, Budapest and Munich were last year (sausage, salt, sausage, salt, sausage, salt, potatoes, repeat) at least.

We ate brown bread at literally every restaurant we went to it seemed and it was always served with the best butter packets you could imagine.

I’m not normally one to rip open butter packets in a restaurant (in fact, if it’s a restaurant that serves bread with “butter packets” I’m probably skipping that bread altogether).

But, the ones in Ireland were creamy, just slightly salty and slathered on warm brown bread…yeah, I could eat that alone for my meal.

So good.

This brown bread recipe turned into muffins out of both laziness (my favorite loaf pan was being occupied by homemade ice cream in the freezer) and the desire to hopefully keep myself in check with portion control.

I have a slight problem when there’s an entire loaf of something in front of me.

It’s called the “I’ll just have a sliver more” syndrome and it usually results in eating a quarter of said loaf (in 5 1/8 inch thick slices) at a time.

For the most part, it worked.

Although, there was a morning when 2 of these made their way onto my breakfast plate.

I added just a touch of candied ginger to this batch and while it’s not traditional, I really think you should too.

It gives the brown bread muffins an added bit of chew and texture while bringing just a hint of spice to each bite.

Spice and Irish aren’t really synonymous, but just go with it, trust me.

And with that, the Irish recipes are done for this year and maybe I can finally go back on Pinterest without having fake green dips, cupcakes and cookies thrown in my face making me want to gag.

If I do green food, it’s pretty much only my green oatmeal or green spinach pancakes – both food coloring free!

Love these Brown Bread Muffins? 

Try one of these other muffin recipes too: Whole Wheat Sweet Potato Banana Muffins, Apple Fritter Muffins or, Carrot raisin everything muffins.

Or try pairing the brown bread muffins with one of these soups, stews or chili:

Kabocha Squash Chili
Creamy Coconut Delicata Squash Soup
Slow Cooker Lamb Stew
Creamy Garlic Brussels Sprout Soup
Spicy Porter Short Rib Chili