Sunday, January 20, 2013

Baked Sunday Mornings: Lemon Pistachio Cornmeal Muffins



SPECIAL BAKER, HONEY AND HER PISTACHIO MUFFINS
One of my pleasures is spending every Wednesday with Honey.  She's been my Baked buddy from the beginning.  Starting out as a propped up baby in a high chair, she is now my special helper who will turn 3 in less than two months.

Honey loves nuts, and pistachios are a favorite. She can dump ingredients into a bowl, whisk the dry ingredients, stir the wet, and fold them all together.  And she can do the decorating.  All the pistachio pieces on the muffin tops are by Honey.

Honey loves to be the taster.  She also likes to touch, and smell, and taste our food, and she always loves to take whatever we bake home to Daddy.

Today's pistachio muffins are delicious with our few changes.  We've had a killer cold spell this past week.  I had picked tangerines for my family before losing them all, so we chose to zest and juice a tangerine instead of lemon.  I'm sure the lemon users are happy, but  the tangerine was a great choice!

And we chose to use blue corn meal rather than yellow.  Thinking of Honey, I thought our muffins might be more colorfully  blue,  but, whatever the color, the taste was great!

YUM!  FRIED IN BROWNED BUTTER
The last change we made was to use salted, shelled pistachios.  I had a large bag of this variety that can be purchased at Costco or Sam's in my pantry.  Because they are salted, I omitted the salt in the recipe and the combination was just right...and we liked the flavorful salty nuts on the muffin tops.

 For fun, we also tried out the Baked note:  We sliced a few muffins vertically, then pan-fried them in browned butter.  These were "absolutely" delicious!    (It's a little scary, but Honey wants to do this part too!)

 



Hope you all enjoyed this muffin recipe as much as we did...it's a keeper, for sure!
                                             Wishing you all a wonderful week!










10 comments:

  1. Your muffins look so delicious and I love the idea of the tangerines. Honey is just adorable!

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  2. Too cute, Kris! I'll bet the tangerine flavor was great, too. I will have to try pan-frying them next time.

    Honey is so lucky to have you! With my dad in the Navy, we often lived far away from our grandparents.

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  3. I can not believe she is going on three now! Wow.
    We have always lived close to my parents - my kids stress out if they don't get to see them often, even now that they are 17/ 18. (Runner Girl even went over there 2-3 days a week while she was home from college on break) Enjoy!

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  4. The muffins look fantastic. And how lucky to have a helper!! She's adorable. I love it when the little ones help out in the kitchen. I remember helping my mom and I will always have those memories.
    I really liked the muffins fried in the brown butter too. Great pics and wonderful post....thoroughly enjoyed it!

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  5. Honey has gotten so big and is absolutely adorable! Your so lucky to have such a wonderful helper in the kitchen.

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  6. loved your post! your grand-daughter is very lucky to spend so much quality time with you!

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  7. What a beautiful child! What beautiful muffins! Love the look of the fried ones!

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  8. What an adorable helper! The muffins look great, your changes all sound delicious.

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  9. What a gorgeous little gal! My mom got me interested in baking at the same age... photos of me from the 80s with my miniature Tupperware bowls and tools! I bet the muffins were amazing. :)

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  10. Oh Kris, Honey has gotten so big!! She is adorable! And your muffins look lovely, too!

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