Cranberry and Oatmeal and Apple Butter Muffins...

Kids liked the last funkadoo muffin I made with oatmeal and flax in it, so I decided to make more for this week's breakfasts. This time I started with a White cake mix...

Cran-apple Oatmeal Muffins
yields 24 muffins

White cake mix
1/2 c oatmeal (I used multigrain this time)
3 eggs
1 c water
1/2 c craisins
1/2 c hazelnuts (ground/finely chopped)
1/2 c apple butter* (takes the place of oil)
1/3 c flaxseed meal

preheat oven to 350F. mix it all up, spoon out into muffin papers, bake for about 20 min or until golden brown on top.

Yum. I also put a teeny dollop of apple butter on the top of each muffin before I put them in to bake. James suggested slightly stirring it in to each cup next time for a marbled effect instead of having all the goop on top.

(*my mom made this by essentially stewing the heck out of some windfall apples last year - but you could just as easily use 1/2 c applesauce or 1/2 cup finely chopped apples)

Cheaterdoodles and Kitchen Sink Cuffins

Yes, I'm speaking English. No, I haven't been drinking. Tonight is Wednesday - baking therapy. Good thing I have neighbors willing to eat the results of my weekly *breakthroughs*, or I'd be ginormous from eating 24 cupcakes over the course of a week.

I was looking forward to baking ever since last night, when I perused the latest Martha Stewart (well, latest for me - it's the February issue with cupcakes on the front). Wow. Cupcake ecstasy in that issue... I stayed up til 12:30 am absorbing the photographs, looking at the frostings, dissecting the recipes... All I could think of was that I wanted to make all of those cupcakes, and I wanted to do it *now*!

Instead, I turned off the light, and had a dream that I used the nasty Pilsbury Sugar Cookie dough with fantastic results by cutting a heart out of the middle of the dough disc, and filling it with raspberry jam. I know there are cookies like these - I've seen them. I've *had* them! They're like those little cookies in the Pepperidge Farm box... What do they call them, stained glass cookies? There's also the Thumbprint cookies, I think, that have the little dent (aha, thumbprint) for the jam on the top...

But that's not what I ended up with this evening.

I mixed up about 1/8 cup (or a few tablespoons?) of cinnamon with about 1/4 cup sugar, added about 1/2 teaspoon each of vanilla, rum, maple and almond extract, and chopped it all in together til it was kind of sandy in consistency... Then I dipped each side of the cookie dough discs in the sugar mix, and baked them in the oven according to the directions (you know, the standard 350F for 10 - 12 minutes?)...

They're delicious! Even I think so - and even though I only ate about 1/2 of a cookie, it's cause I really just can't be bothered with eating cookies. There's no pleasure there for me. Not enough purpose to eating a cookie. But I digress. These were a hit with the fam, and I walked a plate down to the neighbors for poker night. (Which ended up being No-Poker-Cause-We're-Watching-The-Blazers Night, but they were happy none the less.)

So then, I still had about 1/4 cup of the cinnamon sugar mixture left, and decided to make some breakfast muffins for the kids and me. I started with a French Vanilla Cupcake mix, and added a whole bunch of stuff to it. In retrospect, I would not have used the extra sugar in the recipe if I hadn't already had it to use - the muffins would be plenty sweet without it... But they ended up great, and despite all the extra stuff (hazelnuts, cranberries, lingonberry jam, oatmeal, flaxseed meal) they have a really lovely texture and are quite tasty.

This recipe for Cupcake + Muffin + Everything in the cupboard = Kitchen Sink Cuffins yields 24 delicious tasties for breakfast, or if you were doing a brunch, they would hold their own against/with a fluffy cream cheese frosting. That would be delicious. (I list the recipe as if I were making it from the beginning, *not* with the cinnamon sugar from the Cheaterdoodles.)

1 box Bettty Crocker French Vanilla Cupcake Mix
1/4 c cinnamon
1 c oatmeal
2/3 c plain, shelled hazelnuts (ours were from Trader Joes)
1 c dried cranberries (or you could use chopped dried fruit of any sort)
1/4 c flaxseed meal
1/4 tsp each rum, vanilla, almond and maple extracts... or use 1 tsp of vanilla if you only have it
2 eggs
1/3 c lingonberry jam (ours from Ikea)
1/3 c flaxseed oil (only cause I have some in the fridge - it is kind of spendy to cook with - use canola instead)
1 c water

Mix dry ingredients until blended, add wet ingredients and fold together until incorporated.
Spoon into muffin papers, bake at 350F until done through... I didn't really time this, but I'm guessing the finish line will be between 19 and 22 minutes.

Et, Voila. You know what would be really good? A combo like Seville Orange Marmalade and dried apricots in place of the lingonberry jam and cranberries... Or raspberry jam and raspberries/blackberries... Yum. Like I said, this was pretty much whatever I could find in the kitchen, and it turned out delicious!


**** so after a bit of research and some mathematics, I worked out the calorie content, fat grams, and carbs for each of these little suckers. I was sure they'd be out of sight on the calories with all the extra stuff, but lo and behold, they weren't *that* bad!

Kitchen Sink Cuffins: 159 cal, 6 g fat (don't forget, this is mostly from the flaxseed oil and meal, which is tremendous) and 28 g carbs... So I maintain that without the added sugar, and all the fiber, they're not a bad way to get started in the morning!

Missy's Mole-asses Muffins

For Missy... When I make these I will post photos...

• 1 cup all-purpose flour (half white/wheat is ok)
  
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups skim milk
  
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1 egg
  
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 cups bran flakes cereal
• 1/2 cup chopped dates

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. (Convection if you have it)

Spray a 12 cup muffin pan with PAM.

In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, and salt.

In a separate medium bowl, mix wet ingredients (skim milk, molasses, egg, and vegetable oil).

Mix in the bran cereal.

Fold in the flour mixture.

Spoon into the sprayed muffin tins.

Bake 20 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.

OR, try this one!

• 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup dark molasses
• 1/2 cup chopped dates
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup miller's bran or crushed bran cereal

Preheat oven to 400F. Convection if you've got it...

Cream together the butter and the brown sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy, then mix in the egg, sour cream, molasses, and dates.

In a separate bowl stir together the flour, the baking soda, the salt, and the bran (or cereal), add the mixture to the sour cream mixture, and stir the batter until it is just combined. (The batter will be lumpy.)

Spoon the batter into 12 sprayed muffin tins oven for 15 to 20 minutes, or until they are golden brown and springy to the touch.

Complete Failure

Tonight, I made muffins (um, yeah, cause it's Wednesday). And it's rare that I know something is bad before I even got it in my mouth (unlike the cream the other day at work, which I got a full swig of in my coffee before I could tell it had turned) but I digress. 

These muffins were horrific straight out of the oven. I mean, really truly terrible. One might wonder why I bothered making muffins at 10 pm, but with the remodeling project looming large, I think I've been using baking as a calming activity... I'd developed these with orange and cranberry, a perfectly normal combination. But they baked too fast, they caramelized (too much sugar) and they were really awful. Despite the visual and olfactory clues, I took a bite. A big ol' bite. Just to see. 

Badness confirmed. I couldn't even chew and swallow it. I just spat it out in the garbage, and tipped the pan into the bin. Blech. 

I did, however redeem myself with some Peach Cobbler Muffins, which have some delicious oat-y buttery sugary goodness topping. Will post the recipe tomorrow. Trying to get to bed before it turns too ridiculously late to watch another episode of Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Excellent mindless television. 

Rainbow Muffins

Rainbow Muffins

1 c chopped bing cherries
1 medium carrot, shredded
1 mango, pulsed
1 medium zucchini, shredded
1 1/2 c blueberries
1 c dried cranberries
2 eggs
1/2 c brown sugar
2 T vanilla extract
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 c white flour
1 c wheat flour

Threw all the wet ingredients into the bowl, and stirred them all up. At the advice of Liz (the neighbor who can make anything, beautifully, and it looks and tastes professional), I only mixed the ingredients together with the dry for a moment - the last muffins I sent down were a little rubbery, she said, and offered the advice to just mix until the ingredients came together.

This recipe only yields about 18 muffins, so I also tried a different trick of putting water in the empty tins. I didn't like that trick so well, since some of the water splashed into the muffins next door and they ended up flat... But mixing them briefly kept the glutens from getting too rubbery, and these muffins ended up really moist and delicious. I put them in for about 22 minutes at 375F on convection setting.

The rainbow of fruits and veggies in this muffin ends up tasting a little like a bran muffin. I'm pretty sure they'll be as healthy as a bran muffin too, and because of that Jim wanted me to call them "Gurgle" Muffins. However, I think these are really good for the morning... A quick breakfast!

Summer Punkin Muffins

Sooooo... The Cherry Muffins I made last night are already gone. 24 muffins, gone lickity split! Liz sent over some pumpkin puree from her garden, so I decided to see what could be done with that and the sad looking peaches from the organics box (they've been in the fridge for about 10 days, and while they aren't bad, they aren't luscious looking...).

I just started pulling things out of the fridge, and threw them in the mixer as I pulled them onto the counter.

Behold! The Summer Punkin Muffins!

1/2 c plain yogurt (because it's non-fat, and I like to eat the real kind, so I cook with the nf one)
1 1/2 c pumpkin puree
3 eggs
1/2 c blended cherries
1 c blended peaches
1/3 c honey
1 T cinnamon
2 T vanilla extract
1 c brown sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
2 c oatmeal
1 1/2 whole wheat flour
2 c white flour

Mix it all up. Spray the pans (come on, you know the drill). Get out the OXO Good Grips Ice Cream scoop (cause it makes the perfect size glob of batter for the muffins) and git to droppin' batter in those tins!

Bake for (wait for it...) 21 - 25 minutes at 375F or until those puppies poke up over the top of the tins golden brown and wanting to be eaten.

Let cool. Dude, I know you want to chomp right into them, but seriously. Wait. Otherwise, your tongue will be burnt when you want to eat three more while watching this week's episode of Weeds on HD Showtime.