Blueberry Muffins

Guess what time it is?  Secret Recipe Club!  This month I was assigned Debbi's blog Debbi Does Dinner Healthy.  Debbi is also the very gracious hostess Secret Recipe Club's Group C and keeps us all organized and on schedule each month.  I was excited to browse Debbi's blog because she has so many great dinner ideas....that are healthy!  Debbi mostly focuses on meals that are under 500 calories (though she throws in desserts here and there where calorie counting is strictly off limits!).  I had every intention of making something savory from Debbi's blog.  I had my eye on Raspberry Glazed Rosemary Chicken, Parmesan Chicken Bake and Chicken Poblano Casserole.  All so tasty looking! 

But surprise, surprise...

My sweet tooth took over once again.  I'm starting to sounds like a broken record!  I didn't go with a full on dessert so I give myself kudos for that.  I had some beautiful blueberries to use up so I went with a little something sweet for breakfast.  These blueberry muffins have whole wheat flour in them...so they are healthy!  Right?  Actually they are only 221 calories per muffin, which isn't too shabby.  Especially if it means I can have a little sweet at breakfast. :)

The muffins are fluffy and soft on the inside and have a slight crunch on top (which I love) if you serve them fresh out of the oven!  With a lightly sweet crumb, a pop of fresh blueberries and a bit of heartiness from the wheat flour, it's a great way to start your day.  Thanks Debbi!

Enjoy!

Blueberry Muffins
from Debbi Does Dinner Healthy adapted from Brown Eyed Baker

1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 cup sugar
4 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
1 1/4 cup light sour cream (I used Greek yogurt)
1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries (frozen can be used as well)

Preheat over to 350 and line 12 cup muffin tin with liners. 

In a medium bowl whisk flours, baking powder and salt.  Toss the blueberries in the dry mixture.

In a separate medium bowl whisk egg until light in color.  Whisk in sugar and then add melted butter in 2 additions until combined.  Whisk in the sour cream in 2 additions until combined.

Add the sour cream mixture to the flour mixture and gently fold until just combined.  The batter will be very thick (almost the consistency of cookie dough) and may have some streaks of flour.  Do not over mix. 

Divide the batter into the muffin tins (I like to use a full size ice cream scoop for consistent portions).  Bake for 25 - 30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through baking, until muffins are lightly golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.  Remove muffins from the tin and cool on a wire rack for 5 - 10 minutes.  Serve warm if possible. 

Blueberry Donut Muffins

Are you as shocked as I am that summer is really here?  The weeks and months tick by with or without my approval.  I mark the passage of time with the arrival of weekends and the denial of the restart of the work week.  Holidays, birthdays and anniversarys pass.  I fill up my 7 day medication dispenser with vitamins and such each Sunday evening (dang I feel like an old lady saying that).  (I thought about erasing that last bit about the medication dispenser by the way.)  And once a month I participate in Secret Recipe Club.  Something I look forward to.  It's a fun group to be a part of, but it also means another month has zipped by when I wasn't looking. 

The best thing about the monthly arrival of SRC is trying out a new recipe.  This month I was assigned Denise's blog, Creative Kitchen.  I always have a blast browsing through a new blog, and Denise's was no exception.  She has been blogging since 2009, she's busy with a family of five and focuses on making meals made with "real" whole foods.  Creative Kitchen has a variety of sweet and savory dishes, all made with love and as few processed foods as possible.  I admire Denise's committment to feeding her family real food, but keeping it in balance with the reality of our modern processed food society.  It's a concept I'd like to incorporate more into my little family of two.  Reading Denise's blog made me smile.  She has an enthusiastic spirit that is evident in the stories she shares as well as the dishes she creates.  Creative Kitchen definitely has a new follower! 

Choosing just one recipe is always a challenge.  I was drawn to several, but ultimately decided it was time to tackle the donut muffin.  I am a fan of donuts.  I am a fan of muffins.  And a baked donut sure beats frying. 

This recipe is easy to throw together on a Saturday morning as most of the ingredients can be found in a well stocked pantry.  I thought my pantry was pretty well stocked, but as the donut muffins were baking, I realized I was completely out of butter.  That almost never happens.  I always have butter stashed away in the freezer. 

Not this time. 

The donut muffins require the top of the baked donuts to be dipped in melted butter and then in cinnamon sugar.  What to do?  Go to the store at 7:30 am on Saturday morning in my yoga pants and bed head?  Nope.  Send Hubby to the store for me?  Um, he was still sleeping. 

Time to improvise. 

I had some fresh blueberries in the fridge and I had already been thinking about making a blueberry sauce to drizzle over the donut muffins.  Why not use that in place of butter?  It was one of those happy accidents that turned out really well.

The donut muffins have the texture of a cake donut.  Add in fresh blueberry preserves and a cinnamon sugar crunch on top and you have a tasty breakfast treat on your hands.  I enjoyed one or three with a cup of early grey tea.   Now that's the way I like to start my weekend.  Denise recommends doubling the recipe, and I see why.  These little babies go fast!  Thanks for the recipe Denise!

Now, let's see how quickly July arrives.  In the meantime...

Enjoy!

Blueberry Donut Muffins
adapted from Creative Kitchen

1/3 cup of shortening (CK used coconut oil)
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour (CK used whole wheat flour)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 cup milk

Topping:
1/3 cup blueberry preserves (see recipe below or if using store bought, heat preserves in microwave about 30 seconds to 1 minute, until loose)
1/4 cup sugar mixed with 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 and spray muffin tin with cooking spray, or line with paper liners.  I used my mini muffin pan (which is a medium sized mini--as opposed to a small mini) and it yielded 12 muffins (I would plan on 6-8 full size muffins).

In a medium bowl whisk shortening, sugar and egg until fully combined.  In another medium bowl, stir flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg together.  Stir flour mixture into shortening mixture in thirds alternating with milk until just combined. 

Fill muffin cups 2/3 full and bake for 18-20 minutes for mini's or 25 minutes for full size, or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Allow muffins to cool and dip tops in the blueberry preserves and then dip in cinnamon sugar mixture.

Blueberry Preserves
from The Ginger Snap Girl

1 cup fresh blueberries
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and cook on medium high heat.  Boil mixture for 15 minutes, stirring frequently, until slightly thickened.  It will continue to thicken upon cooling.

Apple Pie Muffins

Living in Southern California makes it a bit challenging to discern any transition from one season to the next.  I did put on a sweater one day this week, but that was more to tolerate the frigid zone that is my office.  Plus it was overcast outside so I thought I could justify it.  But the temps were in the 60's, which was the coolest daytime temperature this week.  The temps have climbed up to the 70's and low 80's this weekend.  I shouldn't complain.  It's not snowing here like it is in the northeast part of the country.  Anyway, it really isn't the weather that defines the seasons here.  For me it is the food that tells me what season it is.  And over the last few weeks I've been cooking and baking with some of my favorite fall ingredients, like pumpkin, butternut squash, sweet potatoes and apples.

These apple muffins caught my eye when I spotted them on My Baking Addiction and I knew I needed to make them.  They have large chunks of apple and crunchy crumb topping.  I'm always a sucker for a crumb topping.  I used gala apples, because that is what I had on hand and I found the muffins to be a bit too sweet.  I have a feeling if I had used the tart granny smith apple that the recipe calls for the sweetness would balance out.  If you use a sweet apple I recommend reducing the brown sugar in the muffin recipe by 1/4 to 1/2 cup.  Despite the extra sweetness, I really enjoyed these muffins.  They are definitely reminiscent of apple pie.

Do you ever freeze your muffins?  If you have more muffins than your household can eat within a couple of days, try freezing them.  Once the muffins are completely cool, individually wrap them tightly in plastic wrap.  Place the individually wrapped muffins in a freezer storage zip top bag and remove excess air.  When you want to eat a muffin (or 2), just take the wrapped muffin out of the freezer before you head to bed the night before and set it on the countertop.  It will be completely thawed and ready to eat in the morning.  It's a great way to prevent muffins from going to waste and to have a nice treat without having to bake again.

Enjoy!


Apple Pie Muffins
from My Baking Addiction

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

Muffin:

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (or use cinnamon)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup butter (1 stick), melted and cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 cups chopped granny smith apples, about 1/2 - 3/4 inch chunks

Topping:

1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 tablespoons butter, melted

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Line muffin tin with paper cupcake liners and set aside.  In a large bowl whisk 2 1/4 cups flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda and salt.  In a small bowl, whisk the egg, buttermilk, 1/2 cup melted butter, vanilla and 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar and stir until sugar is dissolved.

Pour the buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture and gently stir until just combined.  Gently fold in the apples.  Fill muffin liners nearly to the top.

Make the topping by combining 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/3 cup of flour, rolled oats and cinnamon in a small bowl.  Drizzle in 3 tablespoons melted butter and mix until combined.  Distribute all the top mixture evenly across the muffins.  Don't be shy!

Bake for 25 minutes or until tops spring back or a toothpick inserted into the muffin comes out clean.  Cool in the muffin tin on a wire rack.

Pumpkin Cheddar Muffins

This marks the 7th recipe for the Club: Baked online baking group.  We are making our way though Baked Explorations by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.  The group started on July 1st and we are baking twice a month, on the 1st and 15th.  Every 2 weeks or so one participant chooses a recipe for the entire group to make and post about.   It's a great way to learn new things and learn from each others experiences with a particular recipe.  This week, Billie of Chocolate and Chakra was our hostess and she selected pumpkin cheddar muffins.

Pumpkin and cheddar cheese in a muffin?  

I have to admit I was skeptical.

I love pumpkin and I love cheddar...but together?  What I have learned is I really shouldn't knock a recipe until I try it.  This recipe surprised me.  Though this muffin technically falls into the savory category, it still has a slightly sweet component.  Kind of like cornbread is savory and sweet.  The pumpkin and cheddar are both very mild and the muffin has just a hint of fall flavor.  It has a nice soft and moist interior with a slightly chewy texture on the outside with the crisp bits of cheese.  And it pairs nicely with soup.

I made half the recipe and ended up with 6 muffins which was perfect for Hubby and me.  The muffins are best served warm.  You can pop them into a 200 degree oven while you are getting the rest of your meal together. 

Hubby and I both enjoyed the muffins, but it wasn't love at first sight.  I probably won't be making them again anytime soon.  There are too many other recipes out in the world that I want to try.  But I'm glad I now know how pumpkin and cheddar work together.  It's not such a crazy idea afterall.  Thanks to Billie for hosting this week.  If pumpkin cheddar muffins sound intriguing you can head over to Billie's blog to get the recipe.

To join our baking adventure head over to the Club: Baked site and get in touch with Karen.  The next recipe up on the roster is Sawdust Pie on October 15th. 

Easy Corn Muffins with Honey Butter and Barbecued Baby Back Ribs

Hubby and I started and ended our summer with a hearty meal of ribs and cornbread.  For Memorial Day we made ribs for the first time.  We had purchased 3 racks of baby back ribs from Costco and froze two of them.  We decided another rack of ribs would be a great way to wrap up Labor Day weekend.  To check out our Memorial Day feast click here. 

Though the Memorial Day ribs were a success, the cornbread I made was not.  In fact I had to make it twice and it still didn't turn out right so I never bothered posting about it.  I thought Labor Day weekend was the perfect time to redeem myself.  I decided to go with a completely different cornbread recipe this time.  I remembered seeing corn muffins several months back over on Tuesdays with Dorie, the online group of bakers making their way through Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home to Yours.  The reviews were good so I gave it a go.

Redemption!  I am happy to say these were a big success.  Dorie calls these muffins the "Corniest Corn Muffins".  They have niblets of corn inside the batter, corn meal for texture and a little sugar to sweeten them.  I used frozen corn in the batter and next time I would like to try it with fresh kernels cut off the cob.  I also added in a little extra sugar because I like a sweeter muffin.  These muffins are easy to make and delicious. Especially with a generous dab of honey butter on top. This recipe is my new "go to" corn muffin recipe.

Now, the ribs.  Our ribs were tasty but a little on the blackened side this time.  Hubs didn't turn them as often as he should have causing the sugar in the barbecue sauce to burn a bit.  I am still sharing the recipe since we made it successfully before.  Just remember to keep an eye on your ribs and turn them frequently on the grill to prevent burning.  Ribs are easier to make than I thought, but they do take a little time. They start in the oven with a little barbecue sauce and steam beneath a foil covered baking dish for about an hour.  Then the ribs get transferred outside to the barbeque and are grilled and basted with more barbecue sauce until they have the lacquered finish you are looking for.  Ours took about 10 minutes.

This time we paired our ribs and corn muffins with grilled asparagus and zucchini parmesan crisps.  It was a ton of food and I'm still overly full as I type this post about 2 hours later.  The sad part is I keep thinking about when I will be hungry again so I can have another corn muffin with honey butter.  Yum.

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

Makes 12 regular size muffins

1 cup flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
6 tablespoons sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg (optional) - I used already ground nutmeg
1 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
3 tablespoons unsalted butter melted and cooled
3 tablespoons corn oil - I used vegetable oil
1 cup corn niblets (frozen, fresh or canned, drained and patted dry)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  Prepare a 12 cup muffin by spraying the wells with non stick cooking spray or lining with muffin liners if you are using.  Place the prepared muffin tin on a baking sheet.

In a large bowl whisk flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg.  In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk buttermilk, eggs, melted butter and oil together until thoroughly combined.  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir with a rubber spatula quickly, yet gently, to full combine.  Don't worry if there are lumps.  Don't over mix.  Gently fold in the corn kernels.  Divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin cups.  Note: I filled mine just a 1/4 inch or less from the top and they didn't bulge over...they were just right.

Bake for 15 - 18 minutes until lightly golden and toothpick or thin knife comes out clean.  Mine took exactly 15 minutes.  Cool muffin tin on a wire rack for 5 minutes.  Turn muffins and continue cooling on the rack.  Serve with honey butter (see recipe below).


Honey Butter

1/4 cup butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 tablespoons of honey
Pinch of fine sea salt

In a small bowl combine butter, honey and salt and stir vigorously until the honey is fully incorporated into a smooth butter.  You can add additional honey if you like a sweeter butter.  Serve butter at room temperature.  Store butter in the refrigerator and remove about 30 minutes before you plan to serve it.


Barbecued Baby Back Ribs
adapted from Paula Deen

2 racks of baby back ribs, each rack cut in half
3 cups of your favorite barbecue sauce - we used KC Masterpiece Private Reserve (from our favorite place....Costco of course!).  Sweet Baby Ray's is another favorite store bought sauce.  For Paula Deen's barbecue sauce recipe click here.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Rub the racks of ribs with 1/2 cup of the barbecue sauce (or more if you are feeling extra saucy).  Place the ribs, meat side down, in a large casserole baking dish.  The racks will overlap a bit.  Cover tightly with foil and bake for 1 hour or until the meat starts to pull away from the bone.  Remove the ribs from oven and pre-heat your grill to medium/high heat.  Brush ribs to coat generously with the sauce and grill for 2-3 minutes and turn them over and repeat the brushing with sauce, grilling and turning until the ribs are a little crisp on the outside, about 10 minutes.  Let ribs rest for 10 minutes before serving. 

Blueberry Streusel Muffins

I'm a little ashamed to admit that in our 2 person household a decent amount of food goes to waste.  My ambitions with food are bigger than reality.  I'm trying to make an effort to use up the ingredients in my refrigerator that are calling out to be prepared and eaten before they die a slow death.  Some ingredients are harder to find uses for than others.  One item that I can't seem to use up is Greek yogurt. I buy the big tub-o-yogurt from Costco and usually use half of the container, at best.  Then there is the pantheon vegetables that never see the light day and go from the fridge straight to the trash can.  Don't get me wrong, I buy them with the full intention of making some yummy dish.  But somehow life intervenes and those dishes I had big plans for never come to fruition. 

Another item I struggle with is buttermilk.  I don't believe I have ever used an entire container of buttermilk. Ever. Even the smaller container. Last weekend I bought a quart of low fat buttermilk to make one of my favorite pies, Lemon Blueberry Buttermilk Pie to bring to Mother's Day lunch.  It's a fabulous pie, by the way.  Especially if you make it with a graham cracker crust.  Anyway, given my track record with buttermilk I didn't even think about how else I could use up the remainder.  I sadly just made the assumption it would see the depths of the trash at some point. But my Hubby said, hey, why don't you make that baked chicken with buttermilk?  It's an Ellie Krieger recipe where you soak chicken tenders in buttermilk and then coat them with crushed cornflakes.  Great idea!  I haven't made the chicken yet, but it's on the menu for tomorrow evening.

You are probably wondering how all this ties to Blueberry Muffins?  Hubbies suggestion about the chicken got me thinking what else I could use the buttermilk for.  That this buttermilk did not have to be destined for waste.  So I went in search of options last night.  I pulled 3 random cookbooks from my small collection and started thumbing through them.  The perfect recipe appeared in the Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics cookbook.  Blueberry Streusel Muffins.  I had all the ingredients in house, including buttermilk, blueberries (left over from last week's pie and were begging to be used), lemon zest.....Perfect!

And it was the perfect way to start off a Saturday.  The muffins are easy to make.  The buttermilk makes them incredibly tender and they are topped with a crunchy cinnamon streusel.  Delicious.  It would make a perfect accompaniment to a brunch menu.

Look how tender it is!

I loved the muffin base, so light and moist.  Though I enjoyed the streusel, I think I slightly prefer this muffin crumble topping.  Ina's muffin with Melissa's crumble will be my next blueberry muffin to try.

Maybe you have some buttermilk in your refrigerator begging to be used?


Blueberry Streusel Muffins
from Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics

Makes 20 muffins
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 cups buttermilk, shaken
1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
2 extra-large eggs
2 cups fresh blueberries (2 half pints)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and line muffin tins with paper liners.

Sift or whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl.  In a small bowl whisk the buttermilk, melted butter, lemon zest, and eggs together. Stir the buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture with a fork, mixing just until blended. Note: I added a couple extra tablespoons of buttermilk because the batter was quite thick.  Gently fold in the blueberries. Do not over mix batter.  Fill prepared muffin cups 3/4 full of batter.  Top with streusel topping.  See recipe below.
Streusel Topping:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) cold unsalted butter, diced

Place all the ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until the butter is in very small pieces. Pour into a bowl and rub with your fingers until crumbly. Spoon 1 tablespoon of streusel on top of each muffin. Note: a tablespoon seems like a lot, but it's just right when the muffin bakes up. 

Bake the muffins for 20 to 25 minutes, until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.   

French Fridays with Dorie: Savory Cheese and Chive Bread

Baked melty cheeses.  Fresh oniony chives.  Baked into a savory bread (or mini muffin in my case) sounds like pure deliciousness.  That's why I was excited to bake this week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe for Savory Cheese and Chive Bread.  When it comes to bread I love bread that has a crispy, chewy outside and my Hubby likes the soft pillowy inside.  So when I made this bread, I knew mini muffins would be perfect for me.  I could maximize the chewy, crispy cheesy exterior with each little muffin.  Check it out!

How do these mini muffins rate on the deliciousness meter?   They get high marks across the board.  This would be the perfect accompaniment to a chili or a soup.   This is no cakey "muffin".  It's a hearty bread.  I used 3 types of cheese, grated gruyere, small cubes of sharp cheddar and grated parmesan.  For extra flavor I used basil flavored olive oil.  And they get a nice little kick from white pepper.  These savory treats will definitely make a repeat appearance at our house.  Next time I plan to add pancetta or finely diced bacon.  That would make these just about perfect.  My mouth is watering just thinking about how they will taste with salty yummy bacon!  Mmmmm.

The dough is simple.  There is no yeast in this bread.  It's a quick bread.  Which really means dry ingredients (flour, salt, white pepper and baking powder) are mixed together (gently) with the wet ingredients (eggs, milk and olive oil) and then you stir in the mix ins (cheese and chives).  Easy. 

I halved the recipe and ended up with 14 mini's. 

My Hubby, who doesn't really like cheese, or crispy bread, ate 4 right off the bat.  Either he was starving or he really liked them.  Hard to tell.  I baked them for about 19 minutes.  The truth is the interior of the muffin was done at 15 minutes but I left them in a few minutes longer to get more browning on top. 

Next time I will take them out at 15 because they were just a touch on the dry side.  Though these aren't intended to be "moist", they would have benefited if they came out of the oven a few minutes earlier.

To see how other French Friday's with Dorie bakers did click here.  The recipe can be found in Dorie Greenspan's book, Around My French Table.

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Bosc Pear and Blue Cheese Savory Muffins

Today I tried new lighting for photographing my food. It wasn't actually intentional, but the light in the kitchen happened to be streaming in right when I wanted to photograph my results. I use a Nikon D5000 camera and 99.9% of the time I use the "Food" scene setting and usually get pretty good results. It's way easier than actually tyring to figure out apertures and F stops. I think the camera thinks if you are photographing food you are probably in a place with questionable lighting. So when I photographed these muffins with full sun using the food setting it came out with a completely different look then using the indirect natural light. The photo above is bathed in sunlight. The 2 photos below are indirect natural light.



The sunlight photo has a nice warm glow. I will have to play around with this and see if I can capture other treats in this nice light.


On to the muffins! Several months back I tried my first Sweet Melissa muffin recipe. The Sweet Melissa Baking book has a base recipe for both sweet and savory muffins and offers a number of variations on each. This was a sweet muffin--Strawberry. Unfortunately the muffins didn't turn out so hot. They were very dense and doughy. Inedible might be too strong a description but I certainly had no desire to eat them so they ended up in the muffin graveyard...my kitchen trash can. I took some comfort in later learning that other Sweet Melissa Sundays bakers had trouble with base muffin recipe too. I was curious how the savory muffin recipe rated. What better way to find out then first hand?

I made half the recipe and subbed sour cream in place of the heavy cream called for (as suggested by Andrea). I used skim milk in place of whole milk and I added several extra tablespoons of milk to get the batter to the right consistency. The savory muffin recipe has a little kick to it with black pepper (I used white) and cayenne pepper. I love the flavor of pear and blue cheese together so I was excited to try this out. I omitted the walnuts because I just don't care for them. I thought about subbing in pecans but I didn't have any on hand. So my muffins were nut-less.

These muffins are very reminiscent of a tender biscuit. They didn't turn out as golden brown as I would have liked. I did enjoy the cheese flavor, but the pear really got lost. The two peppers make this a spicy muffin. Overall, I wasn't lovin it. Another SMS baker commented that these would go nicely with a bowl of creamy tomato soup....and I agree. Eating them straight up didn't do much for me. However I have 19 more mini muffins sitting in my kitchen with only me to eat them. Hubby won't touch these with a 10 foot pole. I may swing by Fresh and Easy tomorrow and pick up a container of creamy tomato soup and give these muffins a second chance.


Thanks Andrea at Nummy Kitchen for selecting this week's recipe. See other SMS bakers muffins here.

Cinnamon Raspberry Muffins

About a week and half ago I bought fresh raspberries with the intention of using them in the Sweet Melissa Sundays Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Torte recipe. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to bake that week but I was determined to make sure the raspberries didn't go to waste. I washed and dried them and then laid them out on a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer. Once frozen I transferred them to a ziploc bag. I wanted to bake something to take over to my Grandfather's house and I thought of those raspberries and a recipe I saw on Tracey's Culinary Adventures blog a couple of weeks back.

This is a simple yet tasty muffin recipe and comes together quickly and easily. They turned out nice and moist. Unfortunately my raspberries weren't as sweet as I would have liked. I also would have added another 1/2 tsp of cinnamon. They would be even more special with a sprinkle of coarse sugar to dress up the tops. Next time! For the recipe check out Tracey's blog.

Looks are Deceiving: My Pretty Strawberry Muffin Misfire

These muffins look pretty tasty, right? Below is my first blog recount of a recipe mishap.


If you have read the handful of posts that I've written so far, you will start to get the idea I'm a big Costco fan. Even though I'm not feeding an army at my house we buy in bulk and generally it works out ok. My most recent purchase was a huge 4lb container of strawberries. Given hubby won't touch strawberries (unless they are in jam form) it was all on me to use them up. I even considered making strawberry preserves. But I've never done the whole canning thing and wasn't ready to go there. After eating the strawberries a la carte and slicing them up in my cereal for a couple of days I zeroed in on a recipe in my new Sweet Melissa Baking Book for Strawberry Muffins with Fresh Lemon and Rosemary. I didn't have fresh rosemary but I had all the other ingredients. And the next day I was going into the office where people would eagerly gobble up any kind of homemade treat. So at 9pm on Tuesday evening I started gathering the ingredients to make these tasty sounding muffins.


Most of my experience with baking starts with combining the wet ingredients and then adding in the dry slowly. This recipe was just the opposite. Melissa Murphy instructs you to put the dry ingredients in a large bowl, making a well in the center and then adding the wet.


I followed the recipe diligently. I pulled the dry ingredients from around the sides of the bowl in the well of melted butter, sugar, milk and cream. When everything was combined I was left with a dough consistency rather than a batter.


I was perplexed. Didn't seem right. The recipe did say the amount of milk could be variable, so I added some additional milk. Didn't help. I reread the instructions again. I didn't miss a step or forget an ingredient (as I've been known to do). I've heard that it's very easy to overwork muffins, but I barely worked these. It's like the flour in the middle of the bowl sucked up the wet ingredients so fast there was no wet stuff left for the flour on the outside edges. I wonder if the moment that I stopped to photo the wet well in the dry mixture had something do with it? I'm not sure. Sigh. Even though I knew deep down (as deep down as you can go when lamenting over a muffin recipe) these were not going to be good, I went ahead and baked them up. They came out of the oven smelling yummy and looking pretty good...actually i thought they looked a little like scone turned muffin. But they really weren't edible in my opinion. Well they were edible, technically, but not good. It was so doughy....you needed a drink to get it down. It was sorta like when peanut butter gets stuck to the roof of your mouth. It was dissappointing. The funny thing is the next day when I was driving to work Hubby texted me and said "You forgot your cupcakes". I love he thought they were cupcakes by the way. I replied back telling him they were left at home intentionally. My co-workers did not get a surprise treat on Tuesday morning. These pretty little muffins went straight into the garbage when I returned home from work in the evening. It was kind of sad. Look how good this little guy looked...


The problem with this recipe failure is I am not sure what went wrong. I just checked out a previous Sweet Melissa Sundays muffin P&Q and found that several other bakers reported a dense muffin. So maybe these weren't as far off base as I thought? I guess my muffin expectations were and are different. These were definitely more scone/biscuit like than muffin-esque. Not my personal preference. It looks like I'll have an opportunity to give Melissa Murphy's muffins another shot the week of May 9th when Sweet Melissa Sundays tries out Orange Blueberry Muffins with Pecan Crumble. All of SM's muffin recipes start with the same base recipe. I think I will scale back on the flour and see how that goes. More to come on muffins!