So, when I am considering breakfast foods muffins are often top on the list. You can add a lot of things to them to keep them nutrient dense and rib sticking!

I started these with 5 Grain Cereal by Bob’s Red Mill. It contains: whole grain oats, whole grain wheat, whole grain rye, whole grain barley, whole grain triticale (wheat)and flaxsed. O.k..that will seriously stick but I wanted more. I added pecans and grated (organic) carrot.  You could add almost any dried fruit, sunflower seeds, or whole grain. Throw in some brown sugar for sweetness and you have a muffin to battle any morning stomach growls.

I used unbleached flour to keep them light. These are going to freeze great and stay moist so make a few batches and keep them for grabbing as you go out the door. We ate them with butter but they would be equally good with cream cheese. Baked at a higher temperature than a normal muffin the tops come out crunchy-crispy with the tender and moist insides that will remind you of carrot cake.

5 Grain Carrot Nut Muffins

• 2 cups of unbleached flour
• 1 cup of Bob’s Red Mill 5 Grain Cereal (uncooked)
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 1/2 cups sour milk or buttermilk
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and allowed to brown slightly
• 1 cup grated carrot
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 cup white chocolate chips (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 400F
2. Add liners to muffin pans
3. Melt butter and set aside
4. Mix dry ingredients including sugar
5. Stir carrots, nuts, and white chocolate into the batter
6. Mix milk and egg and butter
7. Add the wet to the dry and stir to combine
8. Spoon into the prepared muffin tins and bake for about 20 to 25 minutes or until the tops are crispy and a toothpick inserted in the center of one comes out clean.

Makes 12

Images: marye audet

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These are perfect for a breakfast, brunch, or snack. Moist, dense and spicy; pumpkin muffins are autumn in a hand-held package.

Next week is PUMPKIN WEEK on Baking Delights! If you ever wondered:

• How to turn a whole pumpkin into a pie
• Which pumpkins can be used for cooking
• What can I make besides pie with pumpkin..
• How can I use the seeds?

As well as some awesome recipes, including something special I am developing as we speak…well you will definitely want to check back. Between now and then, though, here is a pumpkin recipe to whet your appetite!

Yes..these really were that rich color!  If you would rather a bread than muffins try this Pumpkin Pecan Quick Bread.

Pumpkin Browned Butter Muffins

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2/3 cup butter
• 3 eggs
• 2 cups  pumpkin puree (homemade is best but canned will work..not pre -prepared pie filling)
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground chipotle, optional (but awesome)
• 2 tablespoons finely minced candied ginger, optional
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chopped nuts, optional
• Cinnamon and sugar mixture for sprinkling the tops

1. Preheat oven to 400F
2. Melt butter over medium heat, stirring constantly. Stir until it reaches a golden brown color – remove from heat and set aside to cool
3. Place silicon muffin cups in muffin pan or grease muffin tins lightly
4. Mix dry ingredients and set aside
5. Beat sugars and eggs until light and fluffy
6. Slowly add cooled browned butter
7. Beat in pumpkin puree
8. Stir in dry ingredients until well blended
9. Quickly stir in nuts and candied ginger
10. Spoon into muffin cups and sprinkle tops with cinnamon and sugar
11. Bake for 20 minutes or until done
12. Cool slightly before removing from the pan

Makes 12-16 depending on size

images:marye audet

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I love blueberries.

I wanted to make blueberry muffins but I wanted something a little different that just blueberries. I couldn’t think of a compelling flavor combination and I happened to set the blueberries down next to a bowl of limes.

Well maybe the flavor didn’t strike me as having the potential to be amazing but the color combination of the deep blue and vivid green did. I decided it would be blueberry lime muffins.

They were excellent. Sweet blueberry flavor with the acidic tartness of lime. Lime is so different from lemon, rounder somehow and more full. Citrus always adds a complexity to blueberries…but the lime gives it a little extra wow.

Blueberry Lime Muffins

• 2-1/4 cups flour
• 1 cup  sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• grated zest from one lime
• Juice from one lime
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1-1/2 cups blueberries

1. Preheat oven to 400F
2. Line muffin cups with liners
3. Mix dry ingredients and set aside (add the zest in with the dry ingredients)
4. Mix wet ingredients, including the lime juice, until well blended
5. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and blend quickly. fold in blueberries carefully
6. Spoon into muffin cups and sprinkle with a little sugar
7. Bake at 400 for 20-25 minutes
8. Let cool in pan for 5 minutes before serving. This helps them to firm up.

Makes 12

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When I discovered Numi Mate-Lemon Myrtle tea I was an instant fan. It has a sweet lemon flavor that is lemony but not pure lemon. There is a complexity from the lemon myrtle and mate combination that is awesome.

So, it really was only a matter of time until I created a blueberry muffin with it, wasn’t it? I mean it was just waiting for me.

These were so good. The tea added a nice underlying flavor, and the lemon was subtle rather than tangy. The crumb is moist and tender thanks to a bit of sour cream, but if you don’t do dairy you can leave that out.

The glaze is basic butter, confectioners, and tea with a squeeze of lemon. It added a nice finish to both the look and the flavor of the muffins.

If you are using frozen blueberries you can just add them straight from the freezer. You don’t want to thaw first because they will be so juicy that it will throw your liquid measurement off and your muffins will be soggy.

Mate-Lemon Myrtle Muffins with Blueberries

• 2 packets of Numi Mate Lemon tea
• 3/4 cup simmering water
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• Zest from one lemon
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter melted and cooled slightly
• 2 tbs sour cream
• 1 cup blueberries

1. Preheat oven to 400F
2. Steep both tea bags in the water for 3 minutes. Remove teabags and allow tea to cool.
3. Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl
4. Whisk remaining ingredients except blueberries together in another bowl.
5. Fold in the wet mixture to the dry
6. Stir in blueberries
7. Scoop into muffin cups and bake for 25 minutes, or until tops are golden and muffins test done.

Makes 12 muffins

Glaze:

• 1 cup confectioners
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
• 2 tablespoons Numi Mate Lemon tea
• Juice of half a lemon

1. Mix together until smooth
2. Spread over hot muffins

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There is something about coming in on a dim winter afternoon, cheeks frozen from sledding, and smelling the aroma of date nut bread wafting out of the oven.  Not that I have experienced many snowy afternoons here in Texas, but growing up in Bucks County, Pa..well I had my share of Currier and Ives moments!

Making a sweet bread for breakfast means thinking ahead the day before and I don’t often do that much thinking ahead…at least not anymore.  So, whipping up these muffins for breakfast (total time 30 minutes) is simple.  Sweet and filling, these date nut muffins have big date flavor in every bite, with the faint woodsy-nutty walnut flavor coming in right behind.  Mix them up by hand so that you don’t over beat them—muffin murder.  Overbeating will cause muffins not to rise, and to be heavy and lethargic, somewhat like a teenager  at 7 in the morning.

Date Nut Muffins (from one of my vintage cookbooks, with adjustments by me)

• 1 cup chopped dates
• 1 cup boiling water
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 cups flour, sifted
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 egg
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Topping:

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1/3 cup flour

Crumble together until it looks pebbly.

Directions:

1. Combine dates, baking soda, butter, and water.  Allow to cool.
2. Sift the dry ingredients together.
3. Beat sugar, vanilla, and egg until well blended.
4. Add dry ingredients to the date mixture, alternating with the egg mixture.  Begin and end with dry ingredients.
5. Stir in nut meats.
6. Scoop into 12 muffin cups and top with streusel.  Bake at 400 for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Serve warm.

12 muffins.

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As I have said before, I love breakfast but I really hate making it.  Yes, I am a morning person, and yes I love cooking but the idea of getting up and having to cook is what does me in.

So, in my fantasies I am the quintessential 1950’s sit-com mom (no! Not Lucy!) with the apron, the coiffed hair, the pearls and high heels; but in reality I wear jeans, barefoot most of the time, and I almost always have flour or batter marks on my jean legs where I have cleaned my hands on them rather than being reasonable and wearing an apron.  There is nothing…NOTHING like going to the grocery store to pick up an ingredient you overlooked and realizing that you have two perfectly placed flour handprints on your backside.

Yes.  True confessions.  Oh, and that spot on my jeans?  Chili.

My life is a sitcom sometimes but not the logical and reasonable ones of the fifties and sixties.  For example, as I write this I am sitting at the kitchen table in a Saturday morning kitchen (messy).  The fire is crackling in the fireplace and I am sipping coffee that should have been either drank or poured out hours ago.   I happened to lean forward in my chair and one of the cats took that as an invitation to curl up on most of the chair seat, leaving me balancing precariously on the edge and unable to lean back and enjoy the heat of the fire as opposed to just the cheerful crackle of it.  The dog, on the other hand, is on the cold, wood floor, looking at me imploringly to put my feet up on the hearth so he has an excuse to lay up there by the warmth of the fire and still be fulfilling his dogly duty of lying at my feet.

In the midst of  all of this I really do have a recipe for you.  I made lemon pistachio muffins and they are sunshiny and good…and they are also from a 1950s cookbook that I have.  Well, the pistachio part isn’t…

Anyway, These make twelve 1950s style muffins.  That means they are about 1/4 the size of what we consider a muffin to be now.  Plan on 12 little ones or 6 “normal size” with this recipe.

Lemon Pistachio Muffins

• 1 1/3 c flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• grated rind from 2 lemons
• juice from two lemons (about 1/2 cup)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup chopped pistachios
• confectioner’s sugar for dusting

1. Preheat the oven to 425
2. Mix the sugar, egg, butter and lemon juice well
3. Beat in the lemon rind and sour cream
4. Mix the dry ingredients together and stir in
5. Fold in the pistachios
6. Put in muffin cups and bake for 20 minutes or until done
7. Cool slightly and dust with confectioners sugar

How easy is that?

images:(c) 2009 Marye Audet, all rights reserved

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I have looked at these a number of times in one of my vintage cookbooks and just passed over them..They seemed too simple, too average, too mediocre. A little flour, a few eggs..some butter…yadda yadda yadda.

But something whispered to me the other morning and I thought that I would. I mean, why not? So what if they were mediocre. Some families eat cheerios every morning, surely mine could limp along on mediocrity in the form of a muffin, right?

So I shrugged, made them…and was amazed. Because there was absolutely nothing mediocre about these. They were delicately sweet with a very tender crumb..buttery and cinnamon-y.

SO see? You can’t judge a recipe by it’s ingredients. Sometimes the synergy of the ingredients creates a magic that is totally unexpected.

French Breakfast Puffs

• 1/3 c butter
• 1 c sugar (divided use)
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 c flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/ 2 c milk
• 1/3 c melted butter
• 2 tsp cinnamon. I used a mixture of three different types from Penzeys and it was awesome.

Preheat oven to 375. Put the silicone liners in the muffin cups

Beat butter, 1/2 c sugar, and egg until light.

Sift dry ingredients together. Add alternately with the milk to the butter mixture.

Spoon batter into muffin cups and bake 20-25 minutes.

Immediately remove from muffin cups and dip in melted butter. Roll in mixture of 1/2 cup sugar and the cinnamon. Serve warm.

Makes 12

Image:Marye Audet

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Muffins have to be one of my favorite foods because they are versatile and quick, two things that I really like in a recipe.

You can have them for breakfast, or lunch, or even dinner. You can use them as a snack or with a relaxing cup of tea in the afternoon….and on..and on…

These are particularly good. I love butterscotch and these muffins are full of butterscotch flavor.  But not too much.  Just right.
Butterscotch Muffins

2 c flour

3/4 c sugar

4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

1/4 c melted butter

1 tsp vanilla

1 c milk

1 c butterscotch chips

1 c chopped pecans

Mix dry ingredients together.  Mix wet ingredients together and add to dry mixing quickly with a fork. Do not overmix.   Mix in nuts and chips.  Scoop into silicone cupcake liners and sprinkle sugar over tops.  Bake at 400 for 20 minutes.

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I had some leftover key lime juice from the key lime and strawberry pie that I made and I wanted to use it up. It is not cheap stuff, and besides that, it is too good to let it go bad. Sounds like a country song title, doesn’t it?

Anyway…made these for breakfast the other morning, using my basic lemon muffin recipe and making some additions and substitutions. Don’t you love magic in the kitchen? These just filled the whole house, no easy feat in this huge place, with the mouth watering aroma of lime, and the sweetness of the rose. Think of drinking a fresh limeade in a rose garden in full bloom and I think you get the idea. Later in the spring, when my roses begin to bloom, I want to make them again, with the colorful addition of the rose petals.

Like all muffins, they freeze well for about 3 months. A great way to make sure you have a good breakfast is to make a batch of muffins on the weekend and freeze them and then warm in the microwave for a few seconds in the morning before you head out to work, or whatever.

Don’t wait too long to make these, they are so good!

Key Lime Muffins

2c flour

1 tbs baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 c sugar

2 eggs

1/3 c milk

1/3 c melted unsalted butter

1/2 c key lime juice

1 tbs rose water

3/4 c white chocolate chips if desired

Add the first 4 ingredients to a mixing bowl and stir to combine.

Combine the milk, eggs, butter, lime, and rose. Whisk until smooth.

Add liquid ingredients to dry ingredients, stir until just moistened.

Stir in white chocolate chips if desired.

Spoon batter into silicone lined muffin cups, sprinkle tops with sugar.

Bake at 400° for 18-20 minutes

Images:(c) Marye Audet , Apron Strings & Simmering Things

Content:(c)Marye Audet, Baking Delights 

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Marc is working part time at Home Depot.   I think it has been good for him in the long run- he enjoys it, and working part time has been easier on his knees.  This morning he had to be there at 6:00 so we were up early.  I am a morning person,  I actually like getting up.  Once the sun started coming up this is what I saw:

Could it be?  I opened the door…

This is a lot of snow for my area of Texas! The horses were in the lean to and I was glad we had locked the goats in last night.  I knew the kids would be playing in it-I had all ready promised them a *snow* day.  So I had some coffee and quiet time and made maple crumb cakes for breakfast because…well…because what is better on a cold day than hot chocolate and crumb cakes?

I did not have maple sugar, although this recipe would be better with it.  I used organic maple extract from Frontier.  If you have access to maple sugar, by all means use it rather than the sugar called for!

Maple Crumb Cakes 

2 c flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 c sugar

1/2 c butter

1 egg

1/2 c half and half

1 tsp maple flavor

Sift dry ingredients together and set aside.

Cream the sugar and butter. Add the flavoring and the egg. Beat well.

Add the flour alternately with the half and half, and mix to a smooth batter.  Spoon into muffin cups lined with silicon cups, paper baking cups, or greased.   Top with topping and bake at 375 for 20 minutes.

Topping 

1/4 c sugar

1/4 c butter

1 tsp maple flavor

1/4 c flour

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/2 c chopped pecans.

Mix dry ingredients, except pecans, together and cut in butter with fingers.  Add maple flavor and continue to cut in until all flavoring is absorbed and mixture is crumbly.  Add pecans.  Top each crumb cake before baking.

All content on this page (c)2008Marye Audet for Baking Delights, http://bakingdelights.com , and B5Media.

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