Fluffy Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins

There is so much to celebrate right now. It is finally spring (although it hasn't stopped raining and was 45F yesterday), so much fresh fruit and veggies at the grocery store, AND my beautiful kitchen remodel has finished!! We now have gorgeous counter tops and large to the ceiling cabinets! We even added recessed lighting instead of one florescent light in the middle of the kitchen!! Let us all just agree that it is a glorious day. I am so giddy to start cooking again in this lovely lovely space!

I have a few recipes that I haven't had time to post so lets start with these fluffy Blueberry Muffins! I've been craving blueberries so I decided to make some muffins this morning! Of course I didn't have all the correct ingredients so I've adapted it from the original recipe provided by King Arthur Flour. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as we did!

I used silicon baking cups instead of paper or greasing the muffin tins. The muffins popped out of the silicon cups easily.
I used frozen blueberries.
I used Almond Milk with a squeeze of Lemon Juice.
I omitted the sugar topping.

And before you poo-poo these healthy (ish) muffins...they were so light and perfect for breakfast! 

Blueberry Muffins

Adapted from King Arthur Flour

Yield: 18 muffins

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
½ cup oats (or sub with additional flour)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar (or a little more if you want them sweeter)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup (heaping) blueberries, fresh or frozen (or other berries/diced apples)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup vegetable oil (or olive oil)
1 1/2 cups buttermilk or plain (not Greek) yogurt; or 1 ½ Almond Milk + 1 tbsp (ish) of lemon juice
cinnamon-sugar or coarse white sparkling sugar for topping, optional

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly grease the cups of a standard muffin pan; or line with paper baking cups, and grease the paper cups.
Whisk together all of the dry ingredients, including the blueberries.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the vanilla, lemon juice, and milk/yogurt, and oil.
Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, stirring just to combine.
Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups, filling them 3/4 full.
Sprinkle the tops of the muffins with coarse sparkling sugar or cinnamon sugar, if desired.
Bake the muffins for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the middle of one of the center muffins comes out clean.
Remove the muffins from the oven, and after 5 minutes (or when they're cool enough to handle) transfer them to a rack to cool. Serve warm, or at room temperature. Store leftovers loosely wrapped at room temperature.

Apple Strudel Muffins

One thing you'll learn about me, is that when I cook or bake, it is not in moderation.

I went apple picking with some friends today and we decided we needed the large 20 lb bag to fill with apples and we would split it between 3 of us. This is an absurd amount of apples. Then we acquired another bag so now we have 2 large bags (potentially 40 lbs) to fill with apples. Entirely unnecessary. And yet... SO FUN! I highly recommend apple picking if you haven't been in a few years.

Also, if you don't have one, you should probably invest in an apple slicer/corer/peeler. They are about $15 - $20 and you can buy one at a store like Bed, Bath and Beyond. I'm guessing this goes in the Beyond section of the store. Yes, I went there. :)

So we came back to my apartment to do some serious baking. In about 4 hours we made 2 double batches of Apple Strudel Muffins, a big pan of Apple Crisp, and 2 dozen Mini Apple Pies.

Apple strudel muffins was a recipe I found last year when I went apple picking and found myself in the same situation. These were a special request to make again! This is a simple muffin recipe found online.

Some things to note: this is a thick cake type batter, it won't rise very much. We also reduced the sugar to 3/4 cup from 1 cup.

Wet ingredients

Added in dry ingredients and apples

Regular size and mini size muffins

Apple Strudel Muffins
makes 12-15 normal size muffins

2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/4 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups chopped apples (about 2 large apples)

Topping
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 tbsp flour
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp butter

Preheat over 375F. Prepare muffin tins with papers or grease them
In a bowl mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt
In the mixer bowl beat together butter, sugar, and eggs until smooth. Mix in vanilla. Stir in apples. Slowly add in flour mix.
Spoon the batter into the tins.
In bowl or food processor, cut butter, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon until coarse crumbs. Sprinkle over the tops of the muffins.
Bake about 20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Morning Glory Muffins

Continuing on the zucchini binge (Zucchini Bread with Chocolate Chips and Walnuts)...

These are some of my favorite hearty muffins. Its a regular moist quick bread with lots of tasty things such as coconut, raisins, walnuts, pineapple, etc. I have no idea where I found this recipe but it is a fast go to recipe for me. I substituted in zucchini for the grated carrots. It also calls for 1 apple but I don't include that since I generally don't have apples hanging around. I normally make jumbo ones and freeze them. This time I was feeling lazy so I make them in 8x8 pans.

While there are a lot of ingredients, it is a basic recipe. Wet ingredients + dry ingredients, and mix until just combined.

Preparing the pans (if you aren't going to use muffin papers) is just spraying the tins with non stick spray, then taking a tbsp of flour and tapping it around until all the surfaces are covered.

This makes two 8x8 pans (40-45 min), or 1 8x8 and a loaf pan (50-60 min), 16 jumbo muffins (20 min), and 14 regular muffins (15-18 min) and 24 mini muffins (13 min).

Morning Glory Muffins

Ingredients:

3 large eggs
1 cup vegetable oil (used ½ apple sauce ½ oil)

1-1/4 cups sugar
1 cup (8 ounces) crushed pineapple, drained
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups grated carrots
2-1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup shredded, sweetened coconut
3/4 cup raisins, light or dark

1/2- 1 cup coarsely chopped pecans or walnut

Directions:
Position a rack in lower third of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F. Line standard muffin pans with paper liners. Set aside.
In a separate bowl, whisk eggs, oil, and vanilla.
Whisk together sugar, flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl. Add to dry ingredients and mix until combined.
Add coconut, raisins, pineapple, carrots, and nuts, and stir to combine.
Spoon batter into muffin tins, filling to top of each cup. 
Bake until a toothpick inserted into middle comes out clean (see above for timings).
Cool muffins in pan for 10 minutes, then turn onto a rack to finish cooling.

Pumpkin Muffins

I have been wanting to make these pumpkin muffins for a while. I found the recipe here. I was planning on following the recipe very closely, but, per usual I made some changes.

warm and melt-y with vanilla ice cream

The recipe calls for a heaping cup of pumpkin puree. However, this leaves about an inch of the puree in the can... so I decided to use the entire can. This means, 1) its a very moist muffin, 2) it made more muffins, and 3) when it was warm out of the oven with ice cream on top... it tasted like yummy, yummy, bread pudding. If you wanted to maintain the regular muffin consistency add an extra tablespoon of flour.

Also, I've never used evaporated milk. For those of you who are conversion challenged like I am, 1/2 cup of the milk is less than the 5 fl oz can. Unless you have other recipes that you are planning on making with the milk, the smallest can size will be sufficient.

I used regular raisins...because that was what I had in my baking cabinet.

Next time I would halve the "topping" that is sprinkled over the top, it just made a ton of the mixture.

The original recipe called for cream cheese frosting. I made these for part of my breakfast over the course of a week so frosting wouldn't be ideal. However, if I was making these for a brunch and people were going to be eating them all in the same day, I wouldn't hesitate to add the frosting. 

First I combined all dry ingredients.

Next I combined the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. Then added the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Add in raisins.

Fill muffin tins. These didn't rise as much, I'm guessing its because of the extra puree.

Voila!

 

Pumpkin Muffins

Makes approx 15 muffins

Muffin Ingredients:

1 cup All-purpose Flour

1/2 cup Sugar

2 teaspoons Baking Powder

1-1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon Ground Ginger

1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon Salt

4 Tablespoons Butter, cut into pieces

1 cup (heaping) Pumpkin Puree

1/2 cup Evaporated Mil

1 whole Egg

1-1/2 teaspoon Vanilla

1/2 cup Golden Raisins

Topping ingredients:

2 Tablespoons Sugar

1 teaspoon Cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon Nutmeg

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Generously grease or line muffin tins.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt, pulse in food processor.

Cut in butter food processor until it is fully incorporated.

In a separate bowl, mix together pumpkin, evaporated milk, egg, and vanilla. Pour pumpkin mixture into the flour mixture. Add raisins. Fold until mixture is just combined.

Pour into muffin tins. ¾ full. Sprinkle topping onto each muffin.

Bake for 25 minutes. Let cool.

Happy Eating!

Blueberry Muffins

I love blueberries. I remember making "jam" when I was camping with my family, my cousins and I would spend several hours picking berries from the nearby bushes and then mashing them up with a rock. We added sugar packet upon sugar packet in the violet staining, muddled, clumpy mess. Then it would be spooned into a jar and given to our grandmother... who knows if she actually ate it. Honestly, I hope she didn't, I can't remember if we washed the rocks or rinsed them off in the lake before pulverizing the lovely ripe berries.

My grandmother also made the best blueberry pie for my birthday too... So, blueberries have a special place in my heart. I've been looking at different recipes, always searching for that perfectly textured muffin. This is a combination of 2 different recipes.  One is based of Cooks Illustrated (found here) and the other is from The Cookie Scoop blog (found here). 

I really loved the idea of a blueberry compote, (practically blueberry pie filling!), mixed into the muffins, so I wanted to incorporate that step. The recipe called for 1 cup of blueberries with 1 tsp of sugar, heat over medium heat and then mash down as they heat up, let it cook until its reduced by about a 1/4 cup. I just dumped a bunch of berries into the pot, I figured I could use the compote on toast or an English muffin if I had that much left over. I also had a few raspberries that I threw in mix. :) Love berries. I let it cook down until it smelled so yummy and was thick and jam-y. While the berry mixture was cooling I started on my muffin batter. 

I mixed the dry ingredients together and then mixed the wet ingredients in another bowl. Now, muffin batter is very delicate, do not over mix. Mix until JUST combined and not a moment longer. Combine the wet ingredients in with the dry ingredients, and add the berries in. 

Spoon the mixture into prepared muffin tins, fill about half way. Then add a spoonful of the compote into the middle, and cover with more muffin batter (until 2/3 filled). These muffins don't rise too much. Bake about 15 minutes or until the tester toothpick comes out clean.  

These are denser muffins, almost a biscuit type texture. Imagine the muffin heated in a pan with some butter?? Yum! And the compote was essentially blueberry pie filling - I would (and maybe did) eat this with a spoon!

Both recipes had glaze or sugar crunch toppings which I didn't do because I lacked the ingredients. 

These muffins freeze well too.

Blueberry Muffins
Makes 9-12 

Ingredients:

Spoon batter & compote into prepared tins

1 1/2 cup frozen or fresh blueberries
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg slightly beaten
1/3 cup apple sauce
1/3 cup milk (I used light cream because that was in the fridge)
A few tbs of Lemon juice 

Compote:

Heat 1 cup of berries with 1 tsp sugar on the stove. Mash the berries as they heat up until they are broken down and the mixture is thick and gooey and reduced down to about 1/4 cup. Transfer into a bowl and allow it to cool. (My berries were frozen so it took about 10-15 minutes for this step)

Batter:

Mix sugar, flour, baking powder, salt in a bowl
Combine egg, apple sauce, milk, and lemon juice
Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients
Stir in the rest of the berries

Spoon batter into the prepared muffin tins about 1/3 filled, put in a healthy spoonful of the compote, and top with some more batter.

Pop into the 400 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. 

Let cool on a rack!

Enjoy!!