Archive for the ‘Muffins’ Category
There aren’t too many places in my neighborhood where you can buy muffin tops – at least, not without the bottom of the muffin still attached! There is one bakery that isn’t too far away, however, that still sells tasty muffin tops as well as whole muffins and sharing a few with friends put me in the mood to make some homemade muffin tops.
I opted to make bran muffin tops, but you can adapt just about muffin recipe to work in a muffin top pan. Muffin tops are much wider than regular muffins – about three inches in diameter – and hold about the same amount of batter as a muffin cup. The muffin top pan is a pretty important part of the equation here because dropping muffin batter straight onto a baking sheet won’t give them quite the right shape. Don’t worry if you don’t have a muffin top pan, I’ve noted the baking time below for making this recipe in a regular muffin tin.
The muffin tops use oat bran and oatmeal in them, both of which give them a nice texture and good, nutty oatmeal flavor. They aren’t coarse, like a muffin made with all bran. I added in a little bit of cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla extract to give them some dimension, and loaded them up with lots of raisins for extra sweetness. The raisins become plump and juicy during baking. You can mix up the dried fruit and use dried cranberries, cherries or blueberries instead, and you can add in about 2/3 cup of chopped nuts if you want to add a little crunch to your muffin tops, too.
Since bran muffins aren’t usually all that sweet when compared to berry-filled muffins, I really like to serve these warm with butter. That said, they’re still delicious on their own as a snack or as breakfast with a cup of hot coffee. These freeze well, so make the whole batch and freeze what you’re not going to eat within the first two days, then defrost the leftovers in the microwave or pop them in the toaster when you’re in the mood for a muffin top.
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Every time that I bake a batch of mini muffins, I tell myself that I don’t make them nearly enough. Mini muffins take a bit less time to bake than regular muffins and since you get about three mini muffins with the amount of batter that would make one regular muffin, you get a huge batch that is perfect for sharing at home, at parties or at the office. They’re smaller, of course, but no less satisfying than their bigger brothers.
These are lemon poppyseed mini muffins, which I made using lemon zest from some of my last Meyer lemons of the season. Regular lemon zest works just as well and will, if anything, give them an even brighter lemon flavor. The muffins also get some of their flavor from ground coriander, which is a spice that usually appears in savory dishes but actually has a nice lemon tang to it (as well as a bit of a yellow color). There are, of course, plenty of poppyseeds in here, too.
The finished muffins have a nice lemony flavor and a little bit of crunch from the poppyseeds. They’re just firm enough that you could spread them with butter but tender enough that you’ll still be satisfied munching them on their own. They’re not too sweet, so if you want to infuse a little bit of extra sweetness, give all of the mini muffins a generous sprinkle of coarse sugar on top before you bake them.
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The best pink lemonades I’ve had have actually been strawberry lemonades, made with fresh lemonade and fresh, bright pink strawberries. They have more lemon than berry, but that berry makes the lemonade all the sweeter. These Strawberry Lemonade Muffins mirror that, although they do have more of a yellow color than that pink lemonade might!
To make them, I mixed finely chopped strawberries into the muffin batter – which does give the muffins a slightly pinkish hue when you bite into them – so that you get a nice, mild (and well distributed) strawberry flavor to go along with all that lemony goodness. The muffins are moist and soft, with a good balance of brightness and sweetness to really remind you of lemonade.
To get the half a cup of fresh lemon juice that you need to make these muffins – and always keep in mind that fresh juice will get you a better flavor than bottled juice – you will probably need 2 or 3 good sized lemons. Since you also need lemon zest, picking up a couple of lemons to make these should be no problem. Feel free to zest those lemons like crazy add some additional zest to the batter. Nothing from the lemon will go to waste (except the bitter, white pith) and you’ll get an even more lemonade flavor in the finished muffins.
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Pineapple doesn’t make it into my baked goods very often. This is partially because it is a little bit inconvenient to chop up a whole pineapple for just a cup or so of chopped fruit and partially because I just don’t have that many recipes for it. But this is a shame because pineapple is a fruit that cooks very well. Roasted pineapple, a great summertime dessert, is sweet and tender, and pineapple baked into a muffin, bread or cake turns out the same way.
Since I had some leftover pineapple in my fridge (from a time I was feeling motivated to cut up a whole, spiny fruit), I decided to take my own advice and bake it into something for a snack. The result was pineapple muffins. These muffins are moist and tender, and the small chunks of fresh pineapple seem to triple in sweetness as the muffins bake, giving the finished treats a great tropical taste.
I added a little bit of shredded coconut and a little bit of orange zest to these muffins to highlight the pineapple flavor. The coconut adds a little bit of texture to the muffins and definitely brings out the tropical-ness of the pineapple. The orange zest brings out the citrusy notes of the pineapple, making the whole muffin taste brighter. Lemon or lime zest would make a great substitution, too.
Serve these muffins while they’re still slightly warm with a little bit of butter. They make a great snack in the afternoon, but are easy enough to make (as long as you have some pineapple on hand) that they are well worth the effort of getting up a few minutes early so you can bake a batch for breakfast.
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Gluten free baked goods seem to be getting more popular all the time. This means that there are more products out to help you bake gluten free things than there were, say, five or six years ago. For instance, you can now easily pick up a bag of gluten free flour, such as the Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour I keep in my pantry, and use it in a variety of recipes much as you would use regular all purpose flour. This is exactly what I did with this recipe, adding gluten free flour to a recipe that can easily use regular flour.
These banana pecan muffins certainly did not suffer for being gluten free. Indeed, no one I served them to had a clue that there wasn’t a speck of gluten in them! The muffins are moist, soft and very tender. Some of that tenderness comes from the lack of gluten in the flour, but they were not crumbly or mushy (as some bad GF baked goods I’ve tried have been). They had a great mixture of spices that really complemented the bananas, and of course the pecans added a great crunchiness. I usually like to used roasted and salted pecans in my baked goods for that extra sweet-savory flavor, but regular toasted pecans are just fine, too.
These muffins taste great when they’re fresh, but are so moist that they keep well for a day or two when stored in an airtight container. They’re a great alternative to a banana bread, since muffins take so little time to bake, and make a great breakfast treat with a cup of coffee in the morning if you make them the night before.
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