My daughter, who’s seven, is the average girl – she loves Barbies, puppies and babies. She’s silly, giggly and sometimes just plain crazy. She’s also very clever and artistic. One of the funniest things about her, though, that makes her stand out from her peers, is her love for armadillos. Continue reading
I actually bought buttermilk last week. I’m one of those that usually use the classic substitutes of mixing either vinegar or lemon juice with milk, so actually buying buttermilk was a new thing for me. Continue reading
Well, all that’s done now. Rehearsals, photos, concerts for ballet and concerts for preschool – you name it, we were doing it! All that is over now and I feel a little more at peace. Continue reading
The closest I’ve ever came to a hot cross bun while growing up was reciting the nursery rhyme, “Hot cross buns, hot cross buns, one a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns”. Continue reading
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. Continue reading
I’ve been trying to find a good chocolate chocolate chip muffin recipe but haven’t found many recipes I’d like to try. I came across this one recently, however, and decided to try it. It comes from My Household Capers.
I didn’t use any white chocolate chips, just semisweet chocolate chips. I thought it was quite nice, although a little drier than I expected.
Like I said, it is a nice muffin, but just not quite what I was after. I’d love to find a recipe that would make a muffin like the Otis Spunkmeyer double chocolate chip muffin!
I’ve had this recipe bookmarked for a little while and finally decided to give it a go this past week. It’s a recipe for beatiful-looking strawberry muffins from Noob Cook. Not only are the photos fantastic, but the muffins appeared to be what I consider the perfect muffin, with nice golden tops.
I followed the recipe for the muffins, except I halved the recipe. I thought it was odd that the recipe stated it would make 16 small muffins, yet there were 3 cups of flour in the recipe (seemed a bit much flour for just 16 small muffins!). By halving the recipe, I ended up with exactly 12 muffins from a regular-sized muffin/cupcake pan.
Now you’re looking at the picture and wondering what that stuff is on top of my strawberry muffins – that wasn’t in the original recipe! No, it wasn’t. This was my own addition. It’s leftover crumble topping from some individual cherry and strawberry crumbles I had made.
I’m sure the muffins would have been great on their own, but I didn’t want to waste the leftover crumble topping I had. It would be safe to say that the sole reason I made these muffins was for the leftover crumble topping!
The crumble topping, I believe, was the final touch to these wonderful muffins. The topping gave each bite a satisfying crunch. With brown sugar being one of the ingredients in the topping, it also gave the muffin a little bit more taste.
The muffin itself was incredible! It was actually soft and moist! I was really surprised. The only thing I would change about this recipe next time is I would add maybe another 1/4 cup or so of diced strawberries.
Actually, maybe next time I’d use fresh strawberries as well. I used frozen for these muffins. I don’t know if fresh berries would have made a difference, but the frozen ones really lost their color and turned very pale. They also became sort of stringy, as you can see in the above photo. Next time I’d try fresh and see if they retain their color and texture a bit better.
As for the recipes, head over to Noob Cook for the muffin recipe. If you’d like the crumble topping recipe, see below. Note that you could also use this topping on other flavors of muffins as well.
Crumble Topping For Strawberry Muffins
Makes enough for a generous topping on 12 muffins, probably more!Ingredients
60g all purpose flour
50g old-fashioned oats
35g light brown sugar
pinch of salt
60g unsalted butter, softened and cut into cubesMethod
Mix together flour, oats, brown sugar, salt and butter. Rub mixture together with fingers until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.Prepare muffin batter according to muffin recipe. Spoon batter into muffin/cupcake pans. Sprinkle crumble topping generously on top of muffin batter and bake as directed in recipe.
The crumble topping is most crunchy on the same day that it is prepared and baked. It softens up quite a bit and loses its crunch the next day due to the moistness of the muffins.
The first recipe I’ve decided to try from my new The Taste of Home Cookbook is for brown sugar oat muffins. The original recipe did not list ground flaxseed as an ingredient, but a tip for baking muffins is listed next to the recipe. It reads as follows…
Add Some Flaxseed
Milled flaxseed is packed with heart-healthy oils and is a good source of fiber. Besides sprinkling it on cereal or blending it into smoothies, it can be substituted for some of the fat in breads and muffins. Try using 3 tablespoons of milled flaxseed instead of 1 tablespoon butter or oil called for in a recipe. Be sure to use milled or ground flaxseed to enjoy all its wholesome benefits.
So I added 3 tablespoons of ground flaxseed to the dry ingredients, and reduced the oil in the recipe by 1 tablespoon. The result is an awesome wholesome-tasting muffin that is just perfect for breakfast.
Brown Sugar Oat Muffins (with Ground Flaxseed)
Adapted from The Taste of Home Cookbook
Makes 12Ingredients
1 cup old fashioned oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup packed brown sugar (I used light)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons ground flaxseed
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil, minus 1 tablespoon
1 teaspoon vanilla extractIn a medium bowl, combine the oats, flours, brown sugar, baking powder, salt and flaxseed. In a small bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, oil and vanilla. Stir into the dry ingredients just until combined.
Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full*. Bake at 400 degrees F for 15-17 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack. Serve warm.
* I filled the cups closer to 3/4′s full.
Mmm, I can’t wait until tomorrow’s breakfast to have another one! :)
I wasn’t planning on baking today, but we had two seriously over-ripe bananas sitting around that I knew would end up not getting eaten. I couldn’t waste them, not when the temptation for banana muffins was too strong!
I searched BakeSpace for a banana muffin recipe and found this one, called Snow Day Muffins (blog post here). The photo displayed a nice moist-looking muffin, so I chose this recipe. This recipe was supposed to make 18 muffins, so I halved it and still ended up with 18 muffins! I think I underfilled the cupcake liners, however. Instead of adding walnuts, which I had none of, I added a handful of sweetened shredded coconut and about 1/4 (give or take) cup of chocolate chips.
The result? A very moist, very light, very banana-y muffin! I’m glad I chose this recipe; I was not disappointed at all.
A few notes…
* I added the coconut and chocolate chips to the dry ingredient mixture.
* For step #5, I blended these ingredients for about a minute.
* When adding the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, it is important to only stir until just blended.