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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My parents lived through the Depression. My dad was born in 1917 and my mom in 1918. They saw an amazing amount of change in their lives. Maybe because of the Depression or maybe because they grew up in the country, my parents were very self sufficient. My dad could fix anything, build anything, and come up with the answer to anything. His answer to any failure was to try harder and think deeper. There was nothing you couldn’t do if you just kept trying.

Anyway, I was trying to find a round cutter to make hamburger buns one day. I wanted a particular size and could not find what I was looking for. Finally, a light went off in my brain and….

Do you see it? No? Take a closer look…

Yep. It is a big tomato can. Perfect size for hamburger buns.  The normal size cans are great for biscuits, and the small cans, like tomato paste size,  make great cookies or mini scones.

This is one of my favorite kitchen tools. Every time I use it I think of my dad.

So…True confessions. Do you have a “highly technical” kitchen utensil that you love?

images: marye audet

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I am loving the after Christmas clearances at the grocery stores.  I don’t know how it is where you are but apparently people around here did not bake, cook, or buy as much as usual because there are a ton of things clearanced.

I scored fresh cranberries for 50 cents a bag at the store the other day.  Cranberries are quite the popular item here so I bought enough to make cranberry whatever at least a couple of times a month from now until November.  Cranberries freeze really well, if you didn’t know that.  Just toss the bags in the freezer.

Anyway, I normally make cranberry bread during the holiday season, but I also had a mushy banana so I made cranberry banana bread.  I liked it a lot because the mellow sweetness of the banana tempers the sharp tartness of the cranberries.  Nice.

Look, if you are going to the trouble to make cranberry bread don;t be cheap with the cranberries or nuts if you add them).  Add enough to make it look like there are more than three in the recipe!  I have seen cranberry bread that looks like it is literally “cranBERRY” bread…I always want to suggest that the person try using more than one finely chopped berry the next time.

The best way to chop the cranberries for cranberry bread is by hand.  The food processor grinds them too much in my opinion.  Cranberries are best when they are chopped in fourths or eights. More or less I mean, I don’t take hours with it.

Cranberry Banana Bread

• 1/4 c unsalted butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 cups flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• Grated rind of 1 orange
• 1 cup mashed banana
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 1/2 cup cranberries coarsely chopped
• 1 cup pecans chopped, optional

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Grease and flour a loaf pan
3. Cream butter and sugar
4. Beat in egg
5. Combine dry ingredients
6. Sprinkle about two tablespoons of the dry ingredients over the cranberries and toss
7. Combine orange rind, banana, and milk
8. Add dry ingredients to sugar mixture alternately with the milk mixture
9. Fold in cranberries and pecans
10. Bake for about one to one and a fourth hours
11. Cool

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

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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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About two weeks ago I attended a special party and I needed to bring something…Hmmm…I was in a rush, as always…what to bring?

SCONES!

I love scones.  They are so versatile, so easy, and so delicious (with Devonshire and lemon curd!) that I could make them everyday..except then I would be charged extra by the airlines and I would have to wear a “wide load” sign when I walked through the grocers.

Anyway…

Dried cherries are such a unique cherry flavor.   I think I like them better than fresh.  They seem more complex, more intense..more cherry.  These are rich, buttery, and sweet with a light almond flavor and a lingering cherry taste.  Breakfast? Brunch? Tea? Supper?

All the time.  I used a chocolate drizzle on them but you could certainly do a glaze or leave them plain.

One thing I learned from  PBS cooking show… GRATE your cold butter into the flour mixture.  It changes the texture in an amazing way, and makes it more light and more buttery.  Once you have the butter grated in just mix it lightly with a fork, don’t use your fingers as you might normally.

Dried Cherry Scones 

3 1/2 c flour

2 tbs baking powder

1/2 c cold unsalted butter (freeze it for 5 minutes or so)

1/2 c sugar

1 1/3 c half and half

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp almond

2 cups dried cherries

1 cup dark chocolate, melted with 1 tablespoon butter

Mix the dry ingredients, except cherries, together.

Grate butter into the dry ingredients. Add cherries and stir to mix in evenly. Add vanilla, almond and1/2 and 1/2  and mix until you have a soft dough that holds together.

Roll out gently to about 3/4 inch thickness and cut out with a biscuit cutter. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and allow to stand for 20 minutes. During this time preheat oven to 400F.

Bake for 12 minutes or until done.

Remove from oven.

Melt chocolate and butter together in the microwave.

Drizzle over warm scones with a fork.

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Too hot for the oven!

When I bought my stove I bought a huge one with a griddle in the middle. There are many things I dislike about my stove but THAT is not one.

When it is just too hot to bake these griddle scones bake up light and fluffy right on the hot griddle. They are perfect with some butter and a light dusting of confectioner’s sugar over the top.

I can’t imagine that there may be people who have not eaten fresh mango. But..lots of things surprise me…so… The easiest way to get the mango out of the skin is to slice vertically down each side of the large pit. Carefully make 3 vertical cuts in the flesh just to the skin but not through it. Now make 4 horizontal cuts the same way. Push the skin up from the bottom and slice the flesh off of the skin. Easier done than explained!

Mango Griddle Scones

3 1/2 c flour

1 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 c cold, unsalted butter

1/2 c white sugar

1 c whole milk or half & half

1/2 c pureed mango

1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix dry ingredients.

Grate the cold butter into the dry ingredients with a grater.

Add the milk and mango together. Add all at once to the scone dough. Mix into a soft dough.

Roll out gently to 3/4 inch thickness and cut with cutter. Place on a preheated hot griddle and cook on one side until golden. Flip and cook on the other side.
Makes 14 scones or so.

Image:Marye Audet

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Yeah. I said it. Poser.

Sometimes getting breakfast around here is a big headache.  Imagine what mornings are like with 12 people, 8 of them kids…and of those kids all of them pretty much prefer different things. Cereal is not an option..way too expensive with that many people and teenage boy appetites.

I make doughnuts, and pancakes, and french toast… sometimes when I remember the night before I make cinnamon rolls…The other morning I decided to try cinnamon rolls made with biscuit dough and…IT WORKED! AMAZING!  Cinnamon rolls in under 30 minutes.

The texture is not as light…but they are an acceptable…QUICK substitute for cinnamon rolls.

 Quick Cinnamon Rolls

• 2 c flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1tsp. baking soda
• 1Tbs sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 c cold unsalted butter

• 3/4 c buttermilk

Filling

• 1/4 c unsalted butter, melted
• 1/3 c sugar
• 2Tbs cinnamon (or more to taste)
• 1/2 c chopped nuts

Icing

• 1/4 c unsalted butter, melted
• 1 tsp vanilla
• enough confectioners sugar to make a good icing

Preheat oven to 375F.

Mix dry ingredients well.  Grate the chilled butter into the dry ingredients and mix up.  Add the buttermilk all at once.

Turn out on a floured surface and knead lightly until your dough is manageable.  Rol out in a rectangle.

Spread cooled melted butter over the rectangle.   Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar and then the chopped nuts.  Roll up like a jelly roll and cut into 12 slices.

Place Cut side down on lightly greased cookie sheets and bake for 15 minutes, or until done.

Remove from oven.

Mix icing ingredients and frost the cinnamon rolls while still hot.  Serve warm for best texture and flavor.

12 cinnamon rolls.

Image:Marye Audet

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Yes, we had a wonderful day antiquing. Thank you.

I woke up tasting these. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make them but I had the flavor in my head from the time I opened my eyes.

I was absolutely not disappointed with these. They spread out a bit more than I anticipated, next time I will make sure the dough is firmer. The flavor is delicate and sweetly fruity..the white tea is a fantastic addition. Try these, they are seriously good.

Plum & White Tea Scones

3 1/2 c flour

2 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 c cold, unsalted butter

1/2 c white sugar

1 1/4 c whole milk or half & half

2 large, ripe plums, chopped or diced (leave the skins on)

3 bags of Celestial Seasonings Powerfully Plum White Tea

Heat the milk to a simmer. Remove from heat and add the tea bags. Allow to steep until the milk reaches room temperature. Squeeze the tea bags out and discard them.

Mix dry ingredients.

Grate the cold butter into the dry ingredients with a grater. I find this actually makes a nicer scone than cutting it in.

Toss in the chopped plum and mix lightly. Add the milk and tea mixture all at once and mix into a soft dough.

Roll out gently to 3/4 inch thickness and cut with cutter. Place on a lightly greased baking sheet and brush with egg yolk. Sprinkle with sugar.

Allow to rest for 15 minutes before baking.

Preheat oven to 400F . Bake for 15 minutes or until golden. Let cool slightly.

Makes 12 scones

Image:Marye Audet

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