TWD: Great Grains Muffins

It's about 8pm on a Tuesday night... not the ideal muffin baking hour... but alas here I am with muffins baking away in the oven with some dairy free chocolate cake. My oven might give out with all this healthy crap baking at one time. Its not used to this sort of pressure!

I made mine according to the recipe with chopped apricots and some extra fruit and walnuts scattered on top with a bit of sugar. They tasted like super buttery slightly sweet corn muffins. They would be great with a little maple butter.

You can grab the full recipe here from Christine at Happy Tummy

TWD: Tangerine Poppyseed Muffins

Have I ever told you guys that my honey doesn't like seeds? Yeah.... probably because he really really hates them. The only good benefit to this for me is that I get all the fresh strawberries I want without sharing... and I get extra props if I ever give him seed free strawberry butter cream which is delicious with or without the seeds but he is extra appreciative if he can enjoy it sans-seeds.

Well you can't really make seed free poppyseed muffins, so of course I had to toss in the seeds. I think he was really loathing seeds on Saturday morning... eh oh well! These were just OK anyways and nothing to write home about even if you like seeds. Maybe the lemon version has the right kick that these lacked for me and I found them a little denser that I was expecting too. I could easily chalk this up to my not halving the recipe properly, or over mixing.

You can get the full recipe from Betsy our host this week over at A Cup of Sweetness.

TWD: Coffee Break Muffins

This was a super easy recipe to mix up that took me forever to actually bake. Since I didn't want to turn on the oven I baked them in a mini-muffin pan in my trusty toaster oven in like a billion batches... ok it just felt that way but by the second pan I was cursing my laziness!

I think this is a recipe best the next day, they mellowed out in flavor and the texture is much nicer.

You can grab the full recipe from our host this week Rhiani over at Chocoholic Anonymous.

When I was arranging the muffins for their glamor shot I picked up a muffin that had me rolling with laughter....

Why so serious?

Hey Muffin Head...

Felt the need to bake this morning so I whipped up some carrot laden muffins for breakfast. Like any quick bread recipe you can toss this into a loaf pan if your not feeling muffiny that day. These were great with a little slather of softened butter... but hey what isn't right? right!

Carrot Almond Muffins

• 2 Cups AP Flour
• 1/2 Cup Sliced Almonds
• 1 Cup Granulated Sugar
• 1/4 Cup Brown Sugar
• 1/2 Cup Sweetened Coconut
• 2 tsp Baking Soda
• 2 tsp Cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp Nutmeg
• 3 each Whole Eggs
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1/2 Cup Oil
• 2 Cups Shredded Carrots (thank you inventor of the food processor)
• 1/4 Cup Sour Cream
• 1/2 Cup Raisins
• 1 tsp Almond Extract

Preheat oven to 350. Grease 18 muffin cups or line with paper liners (or grease a loaf pan).
In a very large bowl, whisk together dry ingredients to break up any clumps then stir in the carrot, raisins, nuts, coconut.
In a separate bowl, beat together the wet ingredients until smooth. Stir the wet into the dry until moistened. Scoop into prepared muffin cups or pour into loaf pan. Sprinkle the top with a few almond slices and sprinkle with sugar tossing into the oven.
Bake until the top springs back or a toothpick tester comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. Take a fantastic picture and add your blog link in a comment to tell me if you like them ;)

Doughnut Muffins... Really?

The weekend before my cold flu plague came back with a vengeance to kick my everlovin' butt I whipped up a batch of Doughnut Muffins that I saw over on Megan's site My Baking Adventures. These are OMG good and should only be made when you have a gang of people around to eat them or you may fall victim to the fluffy dough-nut-i-ness and eat them all yourself. Consider yourself warned!

TWD: Spiced Muffins

Ack! I thought I lost my photo of the spice muffins! Way to give a girl a coronary at 8pm! Geesh... well worst case senario, I would have had to make them again of course. They were so good it wouldn't have been such a bad outcome.

In a fit of absolute laziness I didn't measure the butter for the topping and put in way too much.....as if there is there such a thing!? The butter just melted into the bottom of the muffin and made the whole shebang kinda flat and dense. I didn't have any allspice so I subbed in cardamom and cinnamon and used a little tangerine zest in the mix which turned out to be a superb combo IMHO or maybe it was all that melty butter who knows but they were good!

Grab the recipe over at Kayte's blog Grandma's Kitchen Table if you don't have the book and definetly give these a whirl.

TWD: Savory Corn Muffins

Woo hoo actually had time to make this weeks Tuesday with Dorie recipe Savory Corn & Pepper Muffins chosen by Rebecca over at Ezra Poundcake who has a fantastic site by the way, filled with gorgeous photos, don't look because it will just make my photography look all that much crappier, trust me.

My honey was a little shocked that I even made these because I have an aversion to things with corn in them... I don't know why it creeps me out but sometimes I can convince myself that its an acceptable thing. For instance I love when my mom would make corn fritters when I was a kid so this couldn't be that bad right? After all they are CORN muffins, why not have actual corn in them? If I didn't look at them whilst eating it was ok until I hit a little corn nugget. Needless to say I can't look at the picture too much, the corn peeking out there is kind of unnerving to me. I think I might need to see a therapist for my corn issues.

Looking at 300+ pictures of corn muffins is not doing me any good.....

Banana Butterscotch Muffins

Redemption from the last two TWD episodes is necessary and what better to wipe away the memories of Garlic Kugelhopf and Chocolatey Rice Soup than a recipe from Nigela Express.

I saw this recipe over the weekend when I was browsing my vastly underused cookbook collection but for once in my life I didn't have any super ripe bananas in the house...go figure. I bought some bananas on Sunday, they were super green but two days is all I could wait. I suggest that you let them get riper if you make this recipe. It was good, don't get me wrong, we almost ate them all already... but riper bananas would make them that much better.

Banana Butterscotch Muffins ~Nigela Express Page 262

• 1/2 c. Vegetable Oil
• 2 e. Whole Eggs
• 1 2/3 c. AP Flour
• 1/2 c. Granulated Sugar
• 1 tsp. Baking Powder
• 1/2 tsp. Baking Soda
• 1 1/4 c. Mashed Bananas
• 1 c. Butterscotch Chips

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and line a 12 cup muffin pan. Measure the oil into a large glass measuring cup and beat in the eggs. Put the dry ingredients into a bowl and mix in the oil/egg mixture. Mash in the bananas and fold in the butterscotch chips. Scoop into the muffin tins and bake for 15/20 minutes.

TWD: Pumpkin Muffins

I would have waited all night too if I knew such tasty morsels were to be had.... I can't even remember if they ever saw the great pumpkin in this movie (I just remember all the waiting) but I do know that this weeks Tuesday's with Dorie recipe has certainly appeased the pumpkin gods.

I used the organic pumpkin puree from TJs and threw in some walnuts, but skipped the raisins. I'm so glad that I did because raisins in muffins give me the heebie jeebies. I also skipped the sunflower seed topping and added a little sprinkle of turbinado sugar on top instead, but will probably be a little more liberal next time.

Thanks to Kelly of Sounding My Barbaric Gulp! for the fantastic pick (you can go over to her site for the full recipe). I will definitely be making them again in the very near future.