Archive for the ‘Muffins’ Category
My Sugar Donut Muffins are always a favorite when I bake a batch. They’re tasty plain, but they’re also a good base for donut-like variations. For instance, you could fill them with preserves to make jelly donut muffins or with lemon curd to make these Mini Lemon Donut Muffins with Lemon Curd.
These mini muffins have a buttermilk and lemon cake base and are baked in mini muffin pans to produce bite-sized treats. The muffins are dipped in butter and rolled in sugar just after baking to give them a slightly crisp, sugary exterior that is reminiscent of the exterior of a deep fried donut. They’re fluffy and tender, and the cake itself is not too sweet, which means that their sugary exterior balances well with the cake. After baking, I piped a little bit of lemon curd into the center of the muffins for a spring twist.
I make my own lemon curd for the filling of these muffins, usually using a recipe for Lower Fat Lemon Curd to keep in the spirit of lightness with the baked donuts (and because it is delicious). Store bought lemon curd can be used if you don’t want to make your own. Similarly, I used fresh lemon zest in the muffin batter, but you could use lemon oil or lemon extract in place of the vanilla extract if you don’t have a lemon on hand to zest. Fresh zest and homemade curd are going to take your muffins over the top, but these are tasty, lemony treats no matter how you put them together.
This recipe could also be made into regular sized muffins for a larger treat. Follow the directions for the full sized Sugar Donut Muffins for baking times and fill them with lemon curd after baking.
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Cranberries may be a staple of fall baking, especially around Thanksgiving, but these sweet-tart berries can be a welcome addition to recipes any time of the year. These Cranberry Chocolate Chunk Muffins are a perfect example. In them, whole cranberries add bright bursts of color to the muffins and contrast very well with the chunks of rich chocolate that also stud these brunch time treats. They’re topped off with a little bit of sweet streusel. The muffins are buttery, light and have a nice vanilla flavor that allows both the cranberries and chocolate to stand out.
You can use both fresh or frozen cranberries in this recipe, whichever you have on hand. Since the berries are fairly large, big chocolate chunks work quite well in these muffins. You can chop up your favorite dark chocolate bar (choose a good quality chocolate!) to get a really chunky feel to your chocolate, or you can simply use chocolate chips. Semisweet and dark chocolate go a little bit better with the cranberries than milk chocolate does in this recipe.
The recipe makes slightly more than a dozen muffins, and one of the reasons for that is that there are so many mix-ins in the muffin batter. I wanted the muffins to be packed with chocolate and cranberries, then leave a little room for streusel on top, and that left me with enough batter for a few more muffins. Fortunately, in this case, it is a pleasure to have a few extra muffins available.
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A freshly baked batch of muffins is often reserved for the weekends, when we have the luxury of being able to spend some extra time in the kitchen and some extra time to drink coffee, read the paper and relax. But muffins can easily be an everyday food, especially if you make a batch that has a few health-conscious tweaks made to it, and you can bake a batch over the weekend to enjoy even on a busy weekday morning.
These Whole Wheat Banana Nut Muffins are that everyday type of muffin. Packed with fresh mashed banana, they are made with whole wheat flour, vegetable oil and have a handful of heart-healthy nuts thrown into the batter to add a little extra texture and flavor. The muffins are moist and have that same tight, dense crumb that a traditional loaf of banana bread will have, as opposed to a light and cake-like crumb. They have a good banana flavor, accented with a hint of cinnamon and brown sugar. They muffins aren’t too sweet and you can taste the nuttiness of the whole wheat flour, which actually works well with the nuts in the muffins.
I prefer to use white whole wheat flour in these muffins because the finished product is slightly lighter than muffins made with regular whole wheat flour, although both will work just fine in the end. I typically use a mixture of chopped pecans and walnuts in these. You can opt for one or the other – or even use chocolate chips if you want to make these slightly healthy muffins a little more indulgent.
These muffins, like banana bread, store quite well. They will stay moist and fresh in an airtight container for a few days if you’re not going to eat them all at once. They also freeze fairly well, though I like to wrap the individually so that they’re a little more convenient to grab for snacking. They’re good plain, but I also like them warmed up and served with a little smear of salted butter on top.
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I suspect that blueberry muffins might be the most popular type of muffin out there, since they are so ubiquitous at coffee shops and bakeries. They’re popular for a reason: blueberries are delicious, attractive to look at and add a lot of moisture to muffins. A good blueberry muffin recipe also makes a great base for other flavors, like these Blueberry Coconut Muffins, where I added shredded coconut in along with my blueberries to give the muffins a chance to stand out from the crowd of other blueberry muffins.
The batter is simple and sweet, with a hint of vanilla extract to give it some flavor. It is easy to mix up in just a few minutes, and it is thick enough to prevent the blueberries from sinking into the bottom of the pan after you divide the batter into your muffin tin. The coconut sprinkled on top of the muffins toasts during baking, adding a subtle crunch and enhancing the coconut’s overall flavor. The muffins are moist and tender, with a fluffy interior that gets a slight chewiness from all the coconut in the batter. They are best when they’re fresh, but they will keep well for a few days if you can’t eat them all at once.
I used frozen blueberries in these muffins. Frozen berries have a few advantages over fresh blueberries, such as the fact that they are available year round and they are very easy to fold into a muffin batter without having to worry about the berries breaking up. Even when blueberries are in season, I will still often use frozen berries in my baking. Both fresh and frozen berries will work equally well in this recipe. Similarly, both sweetened and unsweetened coconut will work equally well. Sweetened coconut is more common and will add a bit of extra sweetness to the finished muffins, but unsweetened will still lend a great coconut flavor.
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Pumpkin-flavored coffee drinks are seasonal items at many coffee shops, including big chains like Starbucks. Pumpkin and coffee might not sound like an obvious combination, but the fact that people pack these coffee shops on the first day of fall when they can get a pumpkin spice latte should be proof enough that the combination works, and works well. Pumpkin works very well with a wide variety of spices and coffee can really act as just another spice to give a pumpkin baked good character and richness.
These Espresso Spice Pumpkin Muffins treat instant coffee as just another spice added to the mixture of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg that are added to the batter. I used instant espresso (Starbucks Via also works well and has a stronger flavor than other instant coffee products) to get the fullest flavor. The spices meld together and deliver a pumpkin muffin that definitely has a hint of coffee to it, but one that doesn’t overwhelm the pumpkin or the other spices. It simply has a darker and more gingerbread-like flavor than the muffins that don’t include coffee. It’s a nice change of pace for pumpkin baked goods and a definite winner if you’re a fan of gingerbread (in fact, adding ginger would enhance the gingerbread aspect). I dusted the tops of the muffins with a mixture of cinnamon, sugar and more instant coffee.
When you’re dealing with a muffin that is made with a lot of fruit or vegetable puree in it, like these pumpkin muffins or banana bread, the finished product can either be light and fluffy or more dense, more moist and with more flavor from the fruit puree. These fall on the denser, more banana bread-like end of the spectrum. That means that they’re moist and satisfying, as well as sturdy enough to being split in half and spread with butter or softened cream cheese. They keep well when stored in an airtight container for a couple of days, and also can be frozen when they are well wrapped.
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