CEiMB – Rewind: Apple Pecan Muffins

This weeks recipe for Craving Ellie in My Belly picked by Liz of This Chihuahua wears Pearls: she chose Stir-Fried Chinese Cabbage with Tofu, a recipe featured in Ellie Krieger’s Book Small Changes, Big Results. Because this book is not owned by all CEiMB-members and the recipe is not available on the WorldWideWeb, we decided to put it online so that all the members would be able to cook along. I had to skip this recipe: I’m vacationing with E. and he doesn’t eat ‘strange’ foods such as Chinese Cabbage or Tofu, however the recipe can be found at Liz’s blog or here at CEiMB. Check out what my fellow Ellie-istas thought of this stir-fry here.

Lucky for me, we changed the rules over at CEiMB. As of July recipes will be picked biweekly and we’re allowed to sub recipes if we can’t get our hands on ingredients or need to use up other ingredients. I had one wrinkly apple and some pecans that were about to expire, so I decided to make the Apple Pecan Muffins that Joanne of Apple Crumbles had originally picked for June 22nd. These were easy to make, and tasty too! The recipe can be found here at Joanne’s blog, and the links to the posts written by other Ellie-istas on the subject of these muffins are here.

>TWD: Fresh Mango Bread Muffins with Pecans and Coconut

>

After missing out on all last weeks challenges I really looked forward to participating in this weeks TWD as Kelly of Baking with the Boys picked Mango Bread for us to try.

I halved the recipe, used a bit more cinnamon and a bit less ginger. I soaked the raisins in apfelkorn for about 10 minutes and added 1/3 cup of chopped pecans and 2 tablespoons of shredded coconut to the batter to get a more pronounced tropical taste. Then I divided the mixture over some muffin liners and baked them for about 20 minutes. Next time they need a bit less time in the oven as they had a bit too much of a tan on them in my opinion….

This time I forgot to add the lime zest and am afraid that at one point I forgot to half the ingredients: I can clearly remember measuring the whole 1/2 cup of packed light brown sugar and adding it to the rest of the dry ingredients, so I guess my muffins will be a tad sweet this week. I’ll get back on the flavour later today after I sampled a muffin! Update: these were absolutely perfect: nice and moist on the inside with an occasional piece of pecan, yum!!

The coconut however was hardly detectable…. Maybe I’ll add some more next time!

My halved recipe actually made 24 muffins, it always amazes me when I get way more muffins from one recipe than Americans. I’m not exactly sure what this means… MaybeI’m frugal or American muffins are simply enormous!! Anyhow, one of my muffins contains 3 WW points.

Go check out what my fellow TWD-ers thought of the Mango Bread here!
Great news by the way for those of you who are not members of TWD but want to be: the group’s accepting new members!!! If you’re interested, go check out the rules here.

>TWD: some like it HOT….

>

and I’m one of those people!! This was my lucky week, because Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake picked the Savoury Corn and Pepper Muffins as this weeks recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie!! I just didn’t know when I would actually eat these…. They didn’t sound like a typical muffin and to pair them with a cup of tea seemed extremely odd.

To avoid any mishaps I decided to go and have a look at the P&Q’s for the muffins. Big mistake!!! Because after reading all the entries there I (like another couple TWD-ers) had a sudden craving for chili!!! I added an extra 2 tablespoons corn and used a bit more of the red bell pepper than the recipe stated.

Because I never had cornbread or any kind of savoury muffins before I didn’t quite know what to expect of these….. I was pleasantly surprised: I just loved the combination of the sweetness of the sugar and that kick in the butt by the jalapeno pepper!! These were perfect with the chili con carne. Since my parents were also eating chili last weekend I brought some muffins over to them. My mom didn’t care much for them, but she never has been a fan of the whole sweet-and-spicy-combo. My dad absolutely loved them!

I will be making these again!!!

Check out what the other TWD-ers thought of this recipe here!!

>TWD: Pumpkin Muffins

> It’s Tuesday again and ya’ll know what that means: Tuesdays with Dorie!! Boy was I intrigued by this recipe: Kelly of Sounding my Barbaric Gulp requested us to make Pumpkin Muffins. Yes, you read that correct: Pumpkin Muffins.

I have some explaining to do to the non-Dutch readers: pumpkin is not regularly used in dutch cuisine, in fact people that do cook pumpkin are mostly known as ‘nature freaks’: people that wear gray wool socks etc. – I mean no offense, this is just the general image that comes up with people…. I have never cooked/baked with pumpkin before, so I was very curious about the result. To start with I had to make pumpkin puree, the recipe called for canned pumpkin but that was nowhere to be found here in Zwolle. It was easy enough, I packed the leftovers in Zipper-bags per cup and put them in the freezer for future use.

I divided the batter into two parts. The first one I made according to Dories recipe: with pecans and golden raisins. Because I wasn’t sure I would actually like these I subbed the raisins with chocolate for the second part. Everybody knows everything tastes great with chocolate!!

Ofcourse the two looked so much alike, so to make sure I remembered which muffins had raisins in them and which ones had chocolate in them I sprinkled the raisinmuffins with red sugar that actually turned orange while baking in the oven: what do you think of these Halloween Orange Pumpkin Muffins??

These only needed 17 minutes in the oven. I managed to create 22 muffins instead of the 12 Dorie indicates, mine were smaller though: practically bite-size, so cute!! After the chocolate muffins cooled down I melted some chocolate to drizzle over the top to make them look even more fancy.

To my surprise I must admit I loved these, I actually liked the original ones (with raisin in them) better than the chocolate ones!!! My coworkers were also pleasantly surprised with these muffins and rated them very highly!

To see what my fellow TWD-ers thought of the muffins check out the blogroll here.

Let me leave you with one last remark…… These muffins should come with a warning sign:

CAUTION: overindulgence may cause muffin top!!

>Honey Banana Muffins

>Getting ready to go grocery shopping tomorrow, I was cleaning out my fridge this evening and found a pair very ripe bananas hidden in the back. Never wanting to waste anything, I browsed Allrecipes for a nice recipe and found one. I did adapt it though, here’s what I did:

Honey Banana Muffins

1 1/2 cup wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
1/2 cup sweetened applesauce
5 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup golden raisins
lining up the usual suspect, kittycat is alreayd bored to death at this point….

In a large bowl, combine the wheat flour

with the baking soda, cinnamon and salt.

Combine the eggs, banana, applesauce and honey.

Stir the wet ingredients into dry ingredients
until just moistened.

Fold in the raisins.

Coat muffin cups with nonstick cooking spray of use fillers
Fill two-thirds full with batter.

Bake at 375 degrees F for 15-18 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Pour yourself a nice glass of wine (Yep, it’s Friday night, time to relax and enjoy the weekend)

Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.

‘Hmmmmm’, does the kittycat think, suddenly wide awake ‘ those muffins sure look tasty!’

The muffins are nice and moist, I absolutely love the combination of banana with raisins and a subtle cinnamon flavour!! Next time I’ll probably coat the muffins fillers with cooking spray, because they did tend to stick to the fillers.

>Cinnamon Sugar Doughnut Muffins

>

I love doughnuts, I also love muffins; but what do you think about: Cinnamon Sugar Doughnut Muffins…. Sounds great huh? It is absolutely fantastic! The first attempt was a big succes with my col-workers. The second attempt I added some cinnamon to the batter, because I am a huge fan of cinnamon. This resulted in an actual wedding proposal!

The orginal recipe I found on Laura’s beautiful blog: http://laurarebeccaskitchen.blogspot.com/2006/06/cinnamon-sugar-donut-muffins.html

This is my version:

Cinnamon Sugar Donut Muffins (appr. 12 muffins)

Batter
2 cups flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
2 large eggs
1 cup plain yogurt
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
4 to 8 tbsp oil
1 tsp vanilla

Topping
1/2 stick butter, melted
1/4 cup sugar
½ tsp cinnamon

Position oven rack in the middle position and preheat oven to 205 degrees Celsius. Line a standard muffin pan with paper cups.Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, yogurt, sugar, oil, and vanilla. Add flour mixture and mix with light strokes until the dry ingredients are just moistened. Don’t overmix; batters should not be smooth.

Divide batter among the muffin cups and bake until a toothpick inserted in one or two of the muffins come out clean, 12-15 minutes.

While the muffins are baking, melt 1/2 stick butter and place in a bowl just large enough to hold a muffin. Combine ½ cup of sugar and 1 tsp. cinnamon in a small, shallow bowl.

As soon as the muffing are done, dip them one at a time in the melted butter and then roll in the sugar mixture.

Set on a rack to cool.