After eating a sub-par muffin at a diner I really like recently, I realized that it has been far too long since I made a batch of muffins at home. It’s funny to have gotten out of the “habit” of making a batch every week or two, since they’re so easy to make, but then again there is nothing like an absecse (of muffins, in this case) to make the heart grow fonder. I wanted to make use of some of the oranges from my tree, so I decided to go with orange blueberry muffins.

For some reason, lemon ends up paired with blueberry much more often than orange. It’s true that tarter lemon makes a nice contrast with the sweetness of the berries, but oranges are plenty zesty and really brighten up an otherwise plain muffin. I used both fresh orange juice and plenty of orange zest in these, giving a great orange backdrop for the blueberriesin this muffin. Fresh orange zest will go a long way in providing orange flavor, but you can use store-bought orange juice if you don’t have fresh juice at the ready.

The muffins are moist and sweet enough to stand on their own without needing jam, honey or other toppings. They have a great orange flavor to them, too. These will keep well in an airtight container (or a ziploc bag) for a couple of days, so you can enjoy a batch over the course of several mornings without worrying that you have too many muffins around. Fresh and frozen berries will work in these muffins. If you do use frozen, try not to over-mix them into the batter, or you’ll risk the berries thawing slightly and streaking the batter with purple!

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Fruitcake isn’t for everyone, even if you like all the individual components that go into a batch of the dense, spicy holiday cake. It’s heavy and filling - something that you don’t want after a big holiday meal. My solution to the problem is a batch of fruitcake friands. These are definitely not your typical fruit cakes. While they do have dried fruit and a bit of brandy in them, they are soft and tender, with a warm nutty flavor to them. They’re also bite-sized, baked in mini muffin tins, so they aren’t heavy and you can simply pop one or two into your mouth to get a taste of something sweet after even the biggest meal.

Friands are similar to financiers, small cakes made with quite a bit of ground almonds for flavor and texture. Ground almonds, as well as some flour, make up the moist, rich base of these cakes. They usually have some form of fruit in them, and the fruit nut combination makes the ideal starting point for a riff on fruitcake. I left out the spices that you might find in a more traditional fruitcake so that you could easily taste the nuttiness of the almonds in the finished friands. You can also taste the brandied fruits very well this way.

To infuse brandy into the dried cherries, cranberries and raisins, combine the dried fruits in a microwave-safe bowl with brandy. Microwave on high for about a minute, then let the mixture sit as it comes to room temperature. The dried fruits soak up the brandy and become plump and even more flavorful. Cranberry juice or apple juice could be used as a non-alcoholic substitute. For a traditional touch, splash the cakes with a bit of extra brandy as they come out of the oven to really emphasize the brandy flavor and give them some of that extra moistness (from brandy or other liquor) that is typical of other fruitcakes.

Who knows - these might just become a new holiday staple in some households. And I mean that they’ll become a staple on the dessert tray, not that they’ll replace a heavy, old fashioned fruitcake as a keepsake (or a doorstop).

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When all kinds of fruits come into season at around the same time, I end up trying to cram all kinds of things into each dish I make. It takes a lot of editing to pick out one or two fruits to include in the final result, but it’s necessary editing as no one really wants fruit salad muffins regardless of how delicious a fruit salad is. After all, you really want to be able to taste the individual fruit flavors in your finished dish.

These muffins got edited down to blueberries and apricots, inspired by some muffins I had a while back at Starbucks that incorporated the same fruits. The blueberries add lots of flavor, as you might expect, and the apricots add both a honey-like floral flavor and a lot of moisture. I used both fresh blueberries and fresh apricots for these muffins. You can use fresh or frozen blueberries for these muffins. Frozen apricots would work, but they’re hard to find unless you’ve frozen them yourself during the peak of their season. Another advantage to the fresh apricots is that you cane make some small slices to garnish the tops of the muffins.

The muffins are just dense enough to hold up all the fruit in the batter, but are still very moist and tender. The bread part of the muffin has a good buttermilk flavor to it, but the real flavor comes from all that fruit. Blueberries and apricots work great together, and even though they both contribute moisture to the cupcakes, neither one is so moist that they make the muffins soggy or wet at all. They’re very low in fat, although there is a fair amount of sugar in them, so they don’t feel too indulgent or too heavy in your stomach.
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I recently tried a new chocolate bar from Dove, the Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate with Blueberries and Almonds bar. The blueberries in the chocolate bar were dried, so they weren’t entirely dissimilar from chocolate with dried cranberries or cherries, but unlike those other fruits, I didn’t really expect to find blueberries in a chocolate bar! Needless to say, the flavor combination worked well and the sweet, slightly chewy blueberries and the crunchy almonds made a great contrast with the milk chocolate. I liked the bar, but I couldn’t help thinking that the combination would be even better in something else. Something like a muffin or a cake.

So, I whipped up a batch of blueberry muffins, incorporating the chopped up chocolate bar along with more dried blueberries and some chopped almonds. I also put some some sliced almonds on top to further highlight their crunch. The combination worked just as well as in the original bar, although, of course, the muffin is a bit less chocolatey than the bar of chocolate itself.

I used some vanilla and almond extracts to flavor the muffin batter, giving it a good flavor but allowing the berries and chocolate to really come through. Even though I used a Dover bar that already had the fruit and nut combination in it, there is no need to run to the store to make this recipe. Just use any bar of your favorite milk chocolate and chop it up. The flavor from the dried blueberries and the toasted almonds on top come through just fine on their own.

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Banana bread is a classic that I will always keep coming back to. It’s easy, it uses up those pesky overripe bananas, and it can be made in any number of variations. This is something of a variation on it, although I opted for a muffin form rather than a bread. These Banana Peanut Butter Oatmeal Muffins were inspired by a description of some muffins a friend tasted over 20 years ago. As you might imagine, those muffins involved peanut butter and banana - and made quite an impact to be remembered so many years later.! Of course, I have no way of knowing if these are anything like the original muffins, but they are quite tasty in their own right.

The muffins get most of their flavor from mashed bananas and peanut butter, with bananas being the primary flavor and peanut butter adding some unexpected richness. Just slightly overripe bananas add a lot of natural sweetness, but I also added some brown sugar to the muffins to emphasize it. Since my friend mentioned that her remembered-muffins had a little bit of texture to them, I was tempted to add in some bran to make them a bit coarser. Instead, I opted to add some quick cooking oatmeal which opened up the crumb a little and added a hint of nuttiness to complement the banana. The muffins are moist, and surprisingly light and fluffy on the inside - not heavy like bran muffins, or dense like many banana breads.

The muffins are filling, but you can probably eat two at a time without too much of a problem. These are great when topped with butter or extra peanut butter, and are very tasty when soft, fresh and eaten plain.
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Most muffin recipes make a dozen muffins. Sometimes I can get through the whole dozen - with a little help, of course - and sometimes I just can’t. Leftover muffins are usually good for a day or two, but most don’t hold up well longer than that. One solution is to freeze them when they are fresh and defrost them when you want to eat them. Another solution is to make muffin biscotti with the leftovers.

I made these by slicing up muffins thinly and baking them at a low temperature until they were dry and crisp. They don’t  get quite as crispy as regular biscotti, but still crisp enough to dunk into a cup of coffee! The center slices make the best biscotti, but you can slice the ends and toast them up to get the most bang for your muffin.

This little trick works best with muffins that don’t have too much fresh fruit in them - especially if that fruit is some type of juicy berry - simply because they will crisp up better that way. It’ll still work with fruitier muffins, they just won’t have quite the same finished texture as those that are without.

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