Club: Baked - Pumpkin Cheddar Muffins

I resisted as long as I could, but I am finally admitting that it must be fall. I have had a hard time this year getting "in the mood" for fall. I know it officially became fall on the calendar last weekend and football has been on for several weeks now, but I still am in a summer state of mind. In fact, my husband had to beg me this week to put up our fall decorations. It has started to cool down a little here, and I have been able to venture outside for a couple of outdoor runs. Hoping this will help me get excited for fall and all the seasons coming!

These muffins are our next recipe for Club: Baked chosen by Billie of Chocloate and Chakra. As you may have guessed from above, these muffins were my first venture into anything that could be considered "seasonal cooking," but I think they may have given me the kick I needed into fall cooking and baking. The savory nature of these muffins made them more of a dinner pairing than a breakfast treat in my mind, so I went completely into the fall state of mind and served them with some soup. 

I halved the recipe and ended up with six muffins. One thing to note is that the muffins don't rise very much. I took the advice of some of the other group members and filled the muffin papers pretty full, and it seemed to work really well. While pumpkin and cheddar cheese may not be first two flavors you would choose to pair, we really enjoyed these muffins. The cayenne and black pepper give these muffins a little bit of a kick, and they paired really well with our soup. My husband was even thinking further ahead in the fall season thinking that these would be great for Thanksgiving. We'll see :)

A big thanks to Bille for choosing another great recipe and giving me the kick I needed into fall! Be sure to stop by the Club: Baked page to check out the muffins from the other bakers!

Club: Baked - NY Style Crumb Cake Muffins

Woo hoo! First recipe for a new baking group! Club: Baked came about as an idea from Karen of Karen's Cookies Cakes and More. While it's been a great ride, our SMS recipes will wind up in August, and several of us decided that we were in for more baking so we chose another book :) Truthfully, I had never heard of Matt Lewis's Baked: Explorations before it was mentioned for this group, but after receiving the book, I am stoked for this group! If this first recipe is any indication, baking through this cookbook is going to be great (and delicious!).

Our first recipe was hosted by Karen and you can find her post here. The cake was originally intended to baked in a 9x13 with a crumb layer in almost equal thickness to the cake layer. I am definitely amongst the crumb-layer lovers, so this ratio sounds perfect! In reality, I didn't end up making the full recipe as that would be a TON of cake for only two people. Karen had noted on the website that she had trouble when baking half the recipe in a 8x8-inch pan, so I opted for muffins. The only downside of my muffins - they can't hold onto nearly as much crumb topping as the cake. I still really want to make this recipe as written and am absolutely going to keep it in mind if I ever need to bring a dish! 

My muffins came together really easily, and I ended up with a dozen typical sized muffins and a little extra crumb topping. Not knowing how long they'd need to be in the oven, I originally set the timer for 18 minutes. Not even close. In the end, they needed about 28-30 minutes to finish baking. While they were baking, my husband kept asking me are these going to be good? With that much crumb topping, how could they not? They were awesome! We were able to enjoy them warm from the oven on the first morning, and what a great way to start the day. Sounds like this group is going to be great!

If you want to see the other bakers' links or want to join up with us, check out the Club: Baked page!

Blueberry Lemon Cream Cheese Muffins

While I was in AZ over the holidays, we had some friends give us grocery bags full of citrus fruits off their trees in the backyard. The grapefruit that were humongous, the tangelos were the sweetest I have ever tasted, and the lemons were tart, yellow, and juicy. This fruit makes me anxious to get our backyard finished and plant our own trees! I ended up juicing the lemons before I left so we could freeze the juice and enjoy it throughout the year. I also tried to save the zest, freezing it in an ice-cube tray with a little bit of lemon juice, so we'll see how that goes. Does anyone know if citrus zest stores well?

With our surplus of citrus fruit, I was looking around the internet for a heartier breakfast recipe that I could make for my parents on the morning of their flight. Personally, I hate trying to find a decent meal in an airport, and I thought they could at least start out their day with a full stomach =)  I ran across this recipe on Two Peas and Their Pod and it fit perfect. I could use my lemons as well as some of the cream cheese that I had sitting in the fridge from Christmas cookies. 

I followed the recipe pretty closely except for adding about 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice to the batter and excluding the Turbinado sugar because I didn't have any. My batter was pretty thick, and it was a little hard to make sure that the cream cheese pocket was surrounded by batter. The cream cheese leaked out to the sides of a few of my muffins, but since I had them in paper cups, it wasn't a big deal. My muffins did need to bake longer than the stated, but I think this was due to my stoneware pan. I love using my stoneware, but I've noticed with other recipes (especially cookies) that sometimes they need to bake just a bit longer because the pans need to heat up. Has anyone else that bakes with stoneware noticed this?

You can see the cream cheese on the inner side of this one... 

Overall, the muffins turned out beautifully. My family really enjoyed them, and they must have been a great send-off because there weren't any left. Enjoy!

(Printable Recipe)

Blueberry Lemon Cream Cheese Muffins
Adapted from Two Peas and Their Pod

Ingredients:
1-1/2 c. all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 c. sugar
zest of 1 large lemon
1/4 c. canola oil
1 large egg
1/3 c. skim milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 c. blueberries (fresh or frozen, mine were frozen) 

Cream cheese filling:
3 Tbsp. cream cheese
1 tsp. lemon zest
1 Tbsp. sugar 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease muffin pan or line with paper liners. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon. In a small bowl, add the sugar and lemon zest. Rub sugar and zest together until fragrant. Add to the flour mixture and whisk again.

In a separate bowl, mix the canola oil, egg, milk, and vanilla together. Incorporate the wet ingredients into the flour mixture. Add slowly and do not over mix. The batter will be lumpy and thick. Muffin batter is best when there are little bits of flour that just hasn't been quite incorporated. Gently fold in the blueberries. 

In a small bowl, mix together the cream cheese, lemon zest, and sugar until smooth. Fill each muffin cup slightly under half way with batter. Add about 1 teaspoon of the cream cheese mixture to the middle of the batter. Top with the remaining batter, attempting to seal the batter around the outside of the cream cheese pocket. Bake muffins for 17-20 minutes (mine baked for 24 minutes), or until muffins are golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. Let muffins cool on a cooling rack.

Yield: 9 regular-sized muffins

Oatmeal Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

Well, I found out that today was National Pumpkin Day, and who was I to argue? Technically, I didn't make these muffins today, but there has to be some kind of participation points for sharing a pumpkin recipe. I mean, how would we be able to enjoy pumpkin treats if there were no recipes?

Anyway, all silliness aside. Last week I was cruising the blogs looking for "healthier" muffin recipes when I came across this recipe on Mary Ann's blog Meet Me in the Kitchen. I wanted to make a "thank you treat" for the medical team that I had been working with for the past 4 weeks, but I wanted something a little healthier since it was going to be served for breakfast. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy and make my fair share of loaded baked goods, but I'm not a big fan of foods that appear to be healthy but really aren't. If I am going to eat 400 calories for breakfast, then I might as well have had a cinnamon roll =)

The verdict - the muffins were great and were devoured by my teammates. The pumpkin kept them nice and moist, and no one even knew that had whole grains and were low-fat until I told them. Better yet, the mini chocolate chips made them just sweet enough. That my friends is success. Check out Mary Ann's blog for the recipe. I made them exactly as written only doubling the recipe to get a few more muffins. It's a little late now for Pumpkin Day (which is absolutely my fault), but I won't tell =)  Enjoy!

SMS 1 Week Rewind: Bosc Pear, Blue Cheese, and Walnut Muffins

Well, it's been quite awhile since I've been in on the weekly SMS bake-alongs, and I'm still not quite there. I was able to make an impromptu trip to Phoenix last weekend over my birthday to see my husband. Exciting, I know!! Unfortunately, it was only after making these muffins that I realized I had forgotten my camera cord. Thus with sincere apologies to Andrea (and to Melissa of Lulu the Baker for not having this week's pie), my muffins are a week late.

Andrea from Nummy Kitchen was our host for last week's SMS. Melissa's muffins seem to have been problematic for the group in the past, and it seems that each of us has fiddled with the recipe to make them a little less heavy and dry. After reading last week's posts, the consensus seems to be substituting sour cream for either the milk or the heavy cream. 

I started out similarly using fat-free plain yogurt in place of the milk, but ended up having to add some milk anyway to thin out the batter. The muffins did turn out quite moist with the addition of the yogurt, so I'm thinking that when we make these again in October that I'll add the yogurt in place of the heavy cream to take advantage of the more liquid milk. On a side note, I halved the recipe, and still ended up with 14 muffins! I'm sure that I added a few more "wet" ingredients than were called for, but I can't believe that I got that many extra muffins!

As far as flavor was concerned, I think my husband enjoyed them. I've never quite been the biggest fan of blue cheese, so I'm not quite sure what I thought. I was definitely more on the fence. Maybe with a different variation and a big bowl of soup I'll change my mind on the whole idea of a savory muffin =)  

A big thanks to Andrea for hosting and to the rest of the group for putting up with my sporadic posting! Head over to the SMS blogroll to check out the others' muffins as well as this week's lemon blueberry buttermilk pie!

SMS: Lemon-Orange Blueberry Muffins with Pecan Crumble

First of all, Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there including mine! We love you all!

Wow. It's been quite the crazy 2 week stretch! Yesterday, my husband graduated yesterday with his Pharm.D., so we've had graduation activities for most of the weekend. It's been fun, and I couldn't be more proud of him :-)

Anyway, back to the muffins. This week's SMS was hosted by Chaya at My Sweet and Savory. In the Sweet Melissa Baking Book, Melissa has a basic muffin recipe with a page or two about different add-ins that would be good. The group had already baked a couple different variations before I joined, but I was excited for these because blueberry is one of my favorites. Adding any type of crumble onto that makes it that much more delicious!

In the past when the group made the muffins, there were several comments that the batter ended up heavy and the muffins a little bit dry. Given this, I considered swapping some of the butter for a little bit of unsweetened applesauce. I often do this in muffins and quick breads to decrease fat in recipes, especially when the ingredient list calls for oil. The applesauce also helps the muffins stay moist, although you need to be really careful not to overmix the batter.  Despite the comments, I didn't make the applesauce swap here. I like to try to stay pretty true to recipes when I make them for the first time, so that I don't goof things up too much! That said, the batter was heavy, and I would consider swapping in some applesauce in the future.

  

I did leave in the lemon zest called for in the base recipe. I wasn't for sure if we were suppose to completely swap the lemon zest for the orange zest, so I just added both figuring that it would just contribute some extra citrus flavor. Whether or not we were suppose to do it, the combination of the lemon-orange flavors was great! I also used the skim milk that we have in the fridge rather than whole milk. We don't use that much milk to begin with, and buying even a small container of whole milk would have been a waste. I suppose this may have contributed to the consistency of the batter a little bit. However, other bakers also seemed to have that issue.

My other slight variation from the recipe was that I mixed the batter up the night before, covered it, and baked the muffins right away in the morning. This worked great as we got warm muffins for breakfast that I really didn't have to wake up any earlier to make. All that I had to do was spoon the batter into the muffin cups, add the crumble, and bake. Perfect for rushed mornings :-)

Overall, we really enjoyed the overall flavors of the muffins and the pecan crumble. My husband has already been asking me to put these on the "make again" list. Check out muffins from the other SMS bakers here. I've seen some comments that adding a little bit more cream or even some OJ also helped a bit with the dryness. Enjoy!

Dorie's Corniest Corn Muffins

Ever have one of those exams where you find yourself wondering if you studied the same material that was on the exam? That was mine today. It was really frustrating for me today because I KNEW this stuff too...

I had been planning all week to bake something this afternoon after I finished with the exam. Unfortunately, I was so frustrated after the exam that I didn't even want to bake. My hubbs talked me into it again, but I didn't get the cookies done in time tonight to get any good pictures of them in the sunlight. I'll try tomorrow and get them up as soon as I can.

On the other hand, these corn muffins were GOOD. As evidenced by the title, these muffins are from Dorie Greenspan's book Baking from My Home to Yours. I've seen several soups around the blogs lately and thought that I would add some cornbread to the mix to go with all of them! It's definitely the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of most soup pairings! 

It's been a couple months since I made these, but the recipe is drastically forgiving. I originally started out wanting to half the recipe because I'm only feeding 2 - well 3 if you count the pup that thinks she needs some too :-) About half way through, I realized that it called for buttermilk. I didn't have any but remembered that you can add 1 Tbsp. lemon juice in a total of 1 cup of milk (milk + lemon juice) as a substitute. But, I didn't half this part and didn't realize my mistake until I already mixed it in the batter. What can I say? I'm only a sleep-deprived student. 

So as it turns out, I made a full batch of muffins. My mistake completely messed up the dry-liquid ingredient sequence, but the muffins turned out great anyway. Turns out Dorie must be student friendly :-)  

Because of my extra batter, I made some of the muffins full size and some of them as mini's. Just cut down the bake time on the mini's to 8-10 minutes. We did freeze the leftover muffins wrapped well in plastic wrap and then in foil, and they were just as good the next time we had soup. If you're making soup to stay warm in this weather, try these out! Enjoy!

(Printable Recipe) 

Dorie's Corniest Corn Muffins
From Dorie Greenspan's Baking from My Home to Yours

Ingredients:
1 c. all-purpose flour
1 c. cornmeal
6 Tbsp. sugar
2-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
pinch of nutmeg
1 c. buttermilk (or 1 Tbsp. lemon juice with added milk to 1 c.)
3 Tbsp. (1-1/2 oz) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
3 Tbsp. canola oil
2 eggs
1 c. frozen corn kernels

Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 400 degrees F. Butter or spray a regular or mini-sized muffin tin or fit the molds with paper muffin cups.

Working in a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg. In another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, melted butter, oil, egg, and yolk. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients, and with the whisk or rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don't worry about being thorough - the batter will be lumpy. Stir in the corn kernels. Divide the batter equally among the muffin tins.

Bake for 15-18 minutes for regular-sized muffins and for 8-10 minutes for mini muffins or until the tops of the muffins are golden and a knife or toothpick comes out clean. Pull the pan from the oven and carefully life each muffin out of its mold and onto a rack to cool. Extra muffins can be wrapped and frozen for about a month.

Sweet & Simple Bakes: Jammy Doughnut Muffins

Lately, I have been on a quest to find new cooking groups. I find it fun to make something knowing that several others are making the same thing, and it's always interesting to see the individual variations that we all add. This was my first month baking with the Sweet and Simple Bakes group and the recipe up on the block was jammy doughnut muffins.

I went into making this recipe this not knowing how my muffins would turn out. It was not the type of recipe that I would normally pick, I had planned to make several changes to the base recipe as written, and I had to convert the measurements to cups as I do not have a kitchen scale. I have to admit that both my husband and I were pleasantly surprised with the results! I cut the recipe in half when I made it since it was just the two of us, and it probably was a good thing because I think we would have eaten all 12 in 1 night!

I did substitute sugar-free strawberry preserves and they seemd to work quite well. Strawberry is probably one of my favorite flavors, but I may have to play around with it a little bit if I make them again in the future because flavors like apple would definately go well with the cinnamon topping!  Enjoy!

Jammy Doughnut Muffins
2 c. all-purpose flour (275 gm)
3 tsp. baking powder
pinch of salt (I left out since I used salted butter)
1/2 c. castor sugar (100 gm) (I just used granulated sugar that I had on hand)
2 eggs
200 mL of milk
75 gm (3oz) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 tsp. vanilla
12 tsp. strawberry or raspberry  jam (I used sugar-free preserves)

Topping:
100 gm (4oz) unsalted butter
3/4 c. granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon (optional)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line a muffin pan with paper liners.

Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a large mixing bowl (I didn't sift it!), and stir through the sugar. In a large bowl, lightly beat the eggs, then add milk, cooled butter, and vanilla; beat together. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir gently until just combined (do not over mix; lumps are fine).

Spoon half the mixture into the bottom of each muffin liner. Top each with a teaspoon of jam and cover with the remaining muffin mixture making sure that the batter completely encircles the jam. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden and firm to the touch. 

To make the topping, melt butter in a saucepan over low heat. Mix the remaining sugar and cinnamon and spread in a shallow bowl or dish. When muffins are done baking, leave in the pan for 5 minutes. Remove and dip the tops of the muffins in the butter and then in cinnamon-sugar mixture. Serve warm or cool.