Soon after my third child was born, I had went a couple of weeks, maybe three?, where I didn’t bake anything. I was experiencing withdrawal symptoms! I found that cookies were easiest and quickest for me to bake, so I entered a cookie phase. A couple of good cookies from the cookie phase were the cowboy cookies, which were laughably easy, and the chocolate chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.
After the cookie phase ended, I entered a muffin phase! Muffins from this phase were jumbo cinnamon struesel coffee cake muffins…
This was the second time I had made these; for some reason, I can’t fill the muffin tins with the right amount of batter and both times the batter overflowed. That’s fine, they were still really satisfying with my morning coffee.
These muffins also have a layer of cinnamon struesel layered in the middle of them. Find this recipe at marthastewart.com.
Next came browned butter mixed berry muffins. I’ve been really big on browned butter since I made Cook’s Illustrated perfect chocolate chip cookies. Browning the butter added a deeper level of taste to the cookies. So when I saw that Joy the Baker had posted browned butter blueberry muffins, I immediately went to the kitchen and got to work on them, expecting that same toffee-like browned butter taste.
No, they didn’t disappoint! These muffins were one of the best batch of muffins I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating, despite my substitutions. First, I was out of sugar (gasp!!) so I substituted 1/2 cup honey for the sugar, adding it to the dry ingredients and stirring it in after adding the wet ingredients. Because the honey is obviously more liquid than granulated sugar, I reduced the milk in the recipe to 3 tablespoons, and also added a pinch of baking soda (I read online to do this, as honey is acidic). Remember not to give honey to children under one year old because of the risk of them getting botulism.
I still had had leftover struesel from the cinnamon struesel coffee cake muffins, so I used that instead of the struesel recipe for the browned butter muffins.
I also substituted the fresh blueberries for frozen mixed berries (this was all I had on hand). The muffins were so moist and had a beautiful taste from the browned butter, and also the honey. I will definitely make these again and try them with regular granulated sugar, as called for in the recipe. Find this recipe at Joy the Baker.
My two older children love apples, so we usually grab a couple of bags of them at the grocery store. I searched for a good recipe for apple muffins to use up a few of our apples in case we couldn’t get through them before they started to go off.
I baked the batter in my jumbo muffin tin (I got 10 jumbo muffins), which gave us quite a hearty-sized muffin perfect for breakfasts. These muffins were very moist and yummy. Although not in the recipe, I added some cinnamon to the batter, in addition to the cinnamon in the struesel. Find the recipe for these at Cully’s Kitchen.
Oh, notice my Cakespy art in the background of that photo!
I’m still not over my muffin phase; I think they’re perfect to serve warm with coffee. What are your favorite muffins? Maybe I’ll make some of your suggestions next!
