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!

Baked Sunday Mornings: Pumpkin Cheddar Muffins

LOOK AT THAT MELTED CHEESE--HOT OUT OF THE OVEN

JUST OUT OF THE OVEN

I LOVE good, moist muffins, in all their wonderful varieties, and I really LOVE pumpkin...especially during October and November.  I usually choose versions of both muffins and pumpkin that are on the sweet side and I love lots of good flavor.  Even though the Pumpkin Cheddar Muffins have brown sugar, it is not pronounced, making this variety a nice change for me...I immediately ate 4 right out of the oven, before they had a chance to cool even slightly.

THESE PUMPKIN CHEDDAR MUFFINS ARE GOOD ENOUGH FOR THANKSGIVING DINNER

HOT AND DELICIOUS WITH CHOCOLATE CHIPS AND TRADITIONAL PUMPKIN SPICES

Just to compare, and because I had made fresh pumpkin puree (and because I expect company to help eat them) which gave me about 4 cups of pumpkin for today’s baking, I decided to double the recipe and to also make a double batch of my usual pumpkin with chocolate chips muffins...LOVE pumpkin and chocolate together; it’s happiness.

There was nothing unusual about the pumpkin cheddar recipe except for a pretty before-baking garnish of grated cheese, which browned nicely and is an appealing touch.

I baked my muffins...and I got 18 per batch...for 18 minutes and they were perfect with nicely browned bottoms and a perfectly browned top.

MY USUAL VARIETY

Next time, I’ll use pepper jack cheese for a more spicy flavor; my taste buds in my brain tell me it would be really good in this recipe.

My Usual Moist Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins
1 C Flour
2 t Baking Powder
2 t Cinnamon
½ t Nutmeg
½ t Ginger
½ t Salt

Sift above together.

In a mixer bowl, whisk together:
½ C sugar
1 C pumpkin
4 T Butter, room temperature
½ C Evaporated Milk
1 Egg
1 ½ t Vanilla

Remove bowl from mixer, add dry ingredients and fold together just until combined.

Makes 12 muffins.  Bake 400^ for 18-20 minutes in the middle of oven.  For no mess, use cupcake papers.

(For a different variety, use golden raisins instead of chocolate chips)

MY MUFFIN--COULDN'T WAIT FOR IT TO COOL, BUT LOVE THAT GOOEY MELTED CHOCOLATE

Hope you are all keeping warm!  Phoenix went from 110 a month ago to 60 today...I think I may need to go into hibernation...I'm not ready for this!  But it does actually really feel like November.

I had planned to add pumpkin seeds to the top of my Pumpkin Cheddar Muffin, however, someone cute ate them all...but these are good enough to bake again, so next time I'll add them.

Dark Chocolate Banana Muffins

DARK CHOCOLATE BANANA MUFFINS ARE GOOD FOR BREAKFAST OR ANY TIME OF THE DAY

It seems like I have overripe bananas to use every week.  When the kids were young, every Saturday morning  I made a batch of banana buttermilk pancake batter which was inhaled.  We always added special toppings like chocolate syrup, caramel sauce, fresh fruits, and ice cream.  I loved the chocolate with the banana; one of my all time favorites.

Baking these chocolate banana muffins had only one surprise...they are really chocolatey...like good dark chocolate.  With all the other ingredients, and with lots of banana, I was expecting a more mild chocolate flavor.  These muffins disappeared quickly and I will make them again soon...like later this week when I have too many overripe bananas.

This recipe makes 4 dozen regular cupcake size muffins and uses that too-often-on-hand bunch of overripe bananas.

Preheat oven to 350^.  Baking time if the oven is filled with all the muffins will be about 30 minutes.  If the recipe is halved, baking time will be about 20 minutes. Every oven is different.  Begin checking at 20 minutes. If the entire recipe is baked at once; rotate pans 1/2 way through baking.  Use the center oven space for baking these muffins.

Ingredients:  

In a medium size bowl, whisk to combine:

3 C   AP flour

1 2/3 C cocoa

2 t  baking soda

1 t  salt

In a mixer bowl with paddle attachment, combine:

1 C sour cream--if liquid has formed at the top, pour it off before measuring out the sour cream.  There will be enough moisture in the bananas, especially if an extra one is added in.

3 sticks butter at room temperature

Beat above butter mixture until it is creamy and smooth.

Add:

2 C sugar

1 C brown sugar

6 eggs

Again, beat until creamy.

Then add 6 to 8--a nice size bunch--very ripe bananas.   Continue to mix 3-4 minutes on medium speed.  Bananas will have small chunks which are delicious in the muffins.   It's OK if this mixture looks curdled.

Add 1/2 the dry to the wet ingredients.  Mix just until combined.  Then add remainder of dry ingredients and mix again until combined.

Line cupcake/muffin pans with papers and fill 3/4 full...use a 1/4 cup ice cream scoop for no-mess.

When done, cool muffins on a rack while in the pans.

These muffins are good enough to be cupcakes...fooled my grandkids who asked for more....and they don't need frosting.