Return of the Muffin

Apple Bran and Oat Muffins
These are fallish. They have bran, but don't really taste like it. They called for raisins, but I'm not a big raisin fan so I replaced the raisin with a chopped up granny smith. Sadistic?



I went here and adapted.
France would have probably had a muffin deficit. So yay! I like muffins.
-Amanda

Underwhelmed

These aren't my favorites. They were supposed to be great. I took the good bran muffin from before and then swapped greek yogurt for the milk and added a bit of ground almonds and peaches instead of raisins.

Maybe pumpkin pie spice would have made it better. Or almond extract.

I used this recipe .



You know I used a bit more greek yogurt and only 1/2 c. of applesauce for the muffins. Maybe that killed it?

Also maybe frozen peaches are just dumb.
-Amanda

I like Molasses!

But these aren't my favorite brans. See "muffin in the rough," ça c'est très bien. Cette recette a été au dessous de mes attentes.



Cependant, c'est bon.

I got it from this book from the seventies (like everything else in my parent's kitchen) called Laurel's Kitchen.

Her recipe is for apple bran muffins, but we didn't have apples, so I used strawberries and blueberries instead.

She recommends eating these muffins with cheddar.
I say no.


Recipe: Bran Muffins
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups wheat bran
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 TBS grated orange rind
1 cup apple ( I subbed blueberries and strawberries)
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped nuts/seeds ( I left out.)
juice of one orange
scant 2 cups clabbered milk!
1 egg
1/2 cup molasses
2 TBS oil

1. Preheat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix flour, bran, salt, soda, and nutmeg together. Stir in rind, fruit, and nuts if using.
2. Pour juice of orange into a 2 cup measure, fill the rest up with the clabbered milk. Add to egg, molasses, and oil and stir it all together a lot.
3. Combine, but not too much.
Bake for 25 minutes.
Should make about 2 dozen small muffins

This is what I do.

-Amanda

Muffin in the Rough

Muffin went for a hike and found a maze. Actually there were two kinds of muffins. Muffins with just raisins (à la recette) and muffins with goozed banana, blueberry, raspberry, and strawberry.



These are moist and the best bran so far. And they're rugged!


-Amanda

A Moveable Muffin Part 1

Muffin went for a walk this morning! Almost got hit by a car but successfully dogdged the oncoming traffic.


I think it was the sprinkling of pumpkin pie spice that did it.

I also interchanged greek yogurt for the milk and only 1 tablespoon of oil in this . recipe/

And I added cherries too. These have honey and are a bit kiddish in the bran muffin taste department so this is good for them.



-Amanda

Too Much Good Stuff

These muffins right here, what do you suppose they're made of? Flour, butter, sugar, maybe? With a few poppyseeds mixed in?

Nnnope!

Spoiler alert: recipe

If you want the story to unravel before your eyes, read on.

So once upon a time, there was a girl. She used to eat lots of poppyseed cakes as a child, because her daddy bought them at the Stolichnaya on Fairfax and Santa Monica. So she went to Berkeley Bowl and saw heaps of her favorite little seed, scooped them up into a hefty plastic bag, and tucked them away into her shopping cart. They sat in her cabinet, nestled between a bag of walnut pieces her grandma sent her, and a half-eaten emergency bag of chocolate chips.

Then one day everything changed. She came home after a month away (at her real home) and this bag of poppyseed went squish squish when she went digging through her cabinets. MUFFINSSSS.

Actually that was a lie. This girl just wanted lemon bars. But she ran out of powdered sugar. Fortunately, she later realized that she could make powdered sugar with her new mortar and pestle when (not really) making lemon glaze.

The poppyseed lemon muffins were a suggested link on the website with the lemon bar recipe. But it was not a satisfying recipe, so the girl scoured the web for something butterfree (shoutout to pokemon. not really. shoutout to buttersafe.com. so much funny!). THEN SHE FOUND a recipe. That she could use.

This story has lots of wholes in it and is not very professional.

Same with these muffins:

I used somewhere between 3/4c and 1c honey, 1/3c olive oil, 1-1/4c nonfat milk, 3 eggs, 2-1/4c whole wheat flour, 3-1/2 tsp baking powder, a tsp of sea salt, zest from one lemon, and a heaping 1/4c of poppy seeds.

I mixed the flour, baking powder, and salt, and then poured in a whisked mixture of honey, olive oil, milk, zest, and egg. It took a while to integrate the honey well, but it was worth it. It's all just preparation for the day you'll need to whip cream by hand.

I then mixed in poppy seeds, and poured the batter into (lined) cupcake and muffin tins. I baked at a preheated 400F oven, for approximately 20 minutes. Probably a little less. Toothpicks come out clean, it's nice. Voila

(see I know French too)

The most important point here is that poppy seeds are a Miracle! No they are not from papaver somniferum, which oozes when you slit it during growth, and morphines your soul. But Morpheus didn't forget about us normal-poppy eaters. He made sure that if you combine honey and poppy seed, you grow strong and mentally sound. If you're sleepy, you just eat some ground up poppy seed and away you go. Honestly, any problems you have, poppy seeds will fix them.

-Anna

I Thought I Didn't Take Pictures, But I Did

These are Nigella's blueberry muffins. They're from How to Be a Domestic Goddess. I'm too lazy to write the recipe, but basically they're her blueberry muffins except I added grated orange and ground cardamom.

There's melted butter too.


And there we go. Heehee.

I'm clever.

-Amanda

If I Only Had a Food Processor...

So this is the closest I've gotten to the types of good bran muffins you find in coffee shops and bakeries and such. You know..the chewy, honeyed kind that's a deep chestnut color and filled with plump raisins. I got it from here, it's sounds kind of authoritative and revered, no?

Except, the part about food processing the raisins was not possible for me. Our blender is from the 70s and most of the knobs don't work anymore. Hopefully we'll get a replacement soon, but who knows.

I added some cherries and raspberries to some of them to get my fruit quotient up. I think next time I would just use cherries and not raspberries. Otherwise I only tweaked a few things: used 1/2 cup of apple sauce in place of the oil and added only a tablespoon or so of canola oil and for the buttermilk/yogurt part I used 1/2 cup of non-fat greek yogurt.

Instead, I squished the hot water-plumped raisin with a potato masher. It did a decent job, but, I would have hoped for better. Next time, I think it would be fun to soak the whole raisins in some sort of liqueur for five minutes before mixing them in, maybe kirsch?


Good with this?
-Amanda

These Muffins are to Bran, Like Charade is to Hitchcock

So I made these as my muffins of the week. Success? I think yes. But they have no bran, even though I'm branding them as such. Yeah, I did just say that. They have quinoa instead, which is a fluffier substitute for bran...maybe?

They don't give you the weighted down feeling bran does, which maybe or good or bad depending on what you're going for. The berries really make them though--the cherries specifically. I used this recipe , except I
a) skim milk instead of soy, though I'm not opposed
b) Honey for most of the maple syrup since we only had a little bit left
c) Regular whole wheat flour instead of whole wheat pastry flour, since where are you supposed to find that stuff?
d) I replaced the dried fruit with a heck of a lot of fresh cherries, blueberries, and strawberries.


I realized that I ate the last of these on Saturday morning without taking a picture--that's how good they were I guess. Here's a picture of a hedgehog and tea, which I thinks makes up more than enough for it.


Mornings are best with these and this.

-Amanda

The Pits are for People You Don't Like

Cherry Lemon Pine Nut Muffins



These are prettier than they taste. The pine nuts and the cherries are the best part. I would go for orange next time. Maybe it's because I didn't use meyer lemons. Oh well.

I used this recipe, but I popped cherries in them. That's not meant to sound sexual; I don't really know how to rephrase it...

Also I didn't grind up the pine nuts since I don't have a food processor and I was too lazy to dig out the blender.



And right, warn people you do like that there are pits in these. Otherwise you can laugh at the people you don't warn about the pits while listening to this.

-Amanda

The Muffin Cup Conundrum

Wrapper versus naked? Naked is difficult to remove, but paper means a lot of the muffin outer layer is left clinging... I think in the end the extra effort is worth it to get the whole muffin.



These are my third batch in my search for the perfect bran muffin. More bran-y than the last. These call for wheat bran--of which I bought a HUGE bag. They're not as sturdy as the first though. But I I got the right portion of fruit finally!

I adapted the recipe from here, except I
a) Zested a huge orange and put that all in: reminds me of fruit cake for some reason.
b) Used a sprinkling of pumpkin pie spice instead of the recommended pinches of cardamom, all spice, and cinnamon.
c)Uped the apple sauce to 1/2 a cup instead of 1/4.
d)Used splenda instead of regular sugar.
e) Added a banana that was going bad.
f) Added maybe 3/4-1 cup of fresh blueberries.
g) Used only maybe 2 teaspoons of oil.
h) Used skim clabbered milk, instead of low-fat buttermilk.
i) Used almond extract instead of vanilla.

I would say more almond extract and maybe to make it sturdier add flax seed?

And I think this is a good song for them in the morning, it especially complements the tartness of the cranberries.
Anna made a few of these in her pixie muffin pan, yummy. They bled and it was beautiful.



Countdown to True Blood?

-Amanda

Brighter Bran

Banana Berry Bran Muffins



So this bran is a little bit lighter, maybe it's because it's oat bran instead of wheat. These are simpler to make than the other bran muffins, a bit less interesting. Again, I should have put more fruit, maybe some spices too.. I wonder what would be good to put in a banana berry bran muffin, ginger? Cardamom? Cinnamon is over-used, nutmeg, allspice, or cloves, would have been too much...Oooh maybe almond extract?

Here's the original recipe. You could nibble listening to this song.



-Amanda

Clabber Up that Baklava

These were very simple. The honey is messy. I'm not a walnut person but maybe you are.



Care of Nigella:

Filling:
1/2 c. chopped walnuts (Pistachios would be better.)
3 TBL melted butter/margarine
1/3 c. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Cake:
1 1/4 scant c. flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 c. sugar
1 big egg
3 TBL melted butter/margarine
1 + 2 TBL CLABBERED milk = 1 c. skim milk + 2 TBL lemon juice or vinegar (I used both!) --mix together and wait 5 minutes

Honey to drizzle

1. Mix all of the filling ingredients together. Set aside.
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and sugar all together. Then mix the clabbered milk, the egg, and the butter together.
3. Mix the dry and wet together very carefully. Put muffins cups in a 12 muffin tin. Fill them with the batter 1/3 of the way up. Add a scant tablespoon of the filling to each. Then fill each cup 2/3 of the way full with remaining batter. Scatter leftover walnut topping on the tops.
4. Bake for about 15 minutes. Take them out of the tin-carefully! And put them on a rack to cool and be drizzled. I recommend putting a piece of wax paper underneath the rack to avoid messes. Then drizzle honey on each muffin--it's messy but it gets absorbed.




Maybe you want to listen to this song while you eat them.

I like bran muffins better.

-Amanda

Getting Up Close and Personal with Bran

If I had to choose two foods to live on for the rest of my life they would be greek yogurt and bran muffins. Some people don't like bran muffins--they are unenlightened.



But until last week, I'd actually never made them myself. If you live in L.a. I recommend Zen Bakery's vegan line. The cranberry (not dried!), blueberry, mango are incredible.

I found this recipe here.

{Their blog entry is funny-read it!)
Except, I
a) Doubled the recipe--yay more bran!
b)Used skim milk instead of soy or low fat.
c) Put in extra orange zest--good call, I recommend!
d)Put in dates instead of raisins, but only half the amount called for.
e)Added frozen cranberries.
f)Used almonds instead of walnuts but only a few tablespoons.
g)Added some chopped strawberries that were going bad.



I would say next time--more fruit and less honey. There was wayway too much honey. Any vegan would have cried. Well they wouldn't have touched it in the first place thanks to the eggs or milk, but regardless. I would say halve the amount of honey.



Also they would go well with this song.. Actually, I don't know what wouldn't go well with bran, or this song.
Enjoy!
-Amanda

Pixies in Your Breakfast Dish

Finally! An original recipe!

So I was feeling down, and decided to walk through the glistening heap of (unaffordable, just now) surprises that is Sur La Table. And I made my first purchase--a pixie muffin pan (and a cookie cutter). I also talked to someone who went through culinary school who used that cookie cutter to shape his rice.

Anyways, I had no idea what pixie muffins were, but they had little flower patterning, and muffins are always too large for me, so I gave them a try.



Lemon Berry Pixie Muffins
yield:24

2 heaping (and I mean huuge) tbsps of flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 (slightly smaller) tbsps of sugar
1 heaping (bigbigbig) tbsp of yogurt
half an egg's worth of egg white liquid
1 tsp fine lemon zest
blueberries and raspberries (i used less blueberries than there were muffins, and ripped the raspberries up into pieces)

Preheat oven to 350F.

Combine flour and baking powder, then add combined yogurt and sugar, and finally add combined egg and lemon zest. Then throw in as many berries as needed--I liked my muffins rich and juicy, oozing out deep blues and purples.

Fill well-buttered (I used my finger to get into the crevices) pixie muffin pan either 2/3 of the way or completely with batter, depending on the size of muffin you want. Bake until just before it would start to brown (the muffin will feel nice and springy to the touch). There you have it!

These did not last long at all, so don't plan on serving them to anyone. Just show someone how pretty they are, and then devour them.



I also attempted to make banana nut yogurt pixie muffins, but I was not a fan, so you don't have to suffer through the recipe and consequent disappointment in muffin taste.

But here's a photo for y'all. I still like their figure.


-Anna

Where's Walnut

Today I discovered the only thing better than ditching your first ochem lab lecture because you found out the bio lab that was supposed to follow was not happening. The nostril-warming aroma of freshly baked banana walnut muffin. Illuminated by a particularly resplendent flash of lightning.

What you'll need:

1 egg
1 big banana
1/2c olive oil
1c all purpose flour
1/2c brown sugar
1/2c buttermilk (I didn't have any, so I used fat free milk clabbered with some apple cider vinegar)
1/3c walnut pieces
1/2tsp vanilla extract
1/2tsp salt
1/2tsp baking powder
1/4tsp baking soda


Preheat the oven to 400F. Line your muffin tin with muffin liners.

Beat together the oil and sugar, followed by the egg. Then the banana. This part was fun. I threw in chunks and watched the mixer devour them.

Combine flour, salt, and baking powder+soda. Alternate adding this and the buttermilk to the mixer bowl. I probably overmixed the dough, but I liked the fine texture of the muffins.

Stir in walnuts and vanilla.

Fill your muffin tin (I had more dough than could fit into 6 muffin holes, so I used one of my nice large goodwill cupcake container-shaped ramekins to make an oversized muffin.

These are supposed to bake for 20 minutes, but it took me a while longer. It should be nice and golden brown on top. But, as always, poke that guy with a toothpick and make sure that upon extracting your little wooden helper, he leaves your toothpick-touching finger nice and dry. I'm not sure how well I avoided being confusing right there in that sentence. Umm. That's alright.

Oh and, I don't like things that are too sweet, so this was not very sweet at all. Worked well for me. Actually a bit more sugar wouldn't have hurt. Maybe like an 1/8c of granulated. Goodbye.

-Anna




based on this recipe, halved.