There are lots of things I could have done with the last of my fresh cranberries, and fighting the temptation to just make Chicken and Cranberry Sauce again, I decided that it was time for another post on muffins.
Category: Cakes and Desserts (Page 6 of 8)
With the last of my pumpkin I decided to make muffins, as although I love muffins I only have one blog post on them, the eponymous Coffee Muffin Recipe post.
Recently I have been hearing about the US canned pumpkin shortage but American’s don’t know how easy they’ve got it – I can’t find canned pumpkin anywhere! This makes it more difficult to follow the dozens of Pumpkin recipes out there on the interwebs, so I have had to adapt this Pumpkin Muffin Recipe from Smitten Kitchen.
The brown butter adaption is something that has been running about in the back of head for some time, I loved the idea of a nuttier buttery taste. This recipe like most muffin recipes use oil instead of butter, but I figured that substituting melted butter would work just the same.
The links in the recipe below, take you to subsequent pages of this post that explain how to make each ingredient from scratch.
Brown Butter Pumpkin Muffins
~ makes 12.
- 1 cup of pumpkin puree (or 1 cup of canned solid-pack pumpkin)
- 1/4 cup of brown butter (or 1/3 cup vegetable oil)
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin-pie spice or make your own pumpkin-pie spice
- 1 tablespoon of cinnamon sugar
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 large eggs
- 1 1/4 cups
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Preheat the oven to 180oC or 350oF. Line a tin with muffin cups, or in my case fairy cake liners.
Add the pumpkin, brown butter, spices, sugar, baking soda and salt (if using), from reading the recipe Smitten Kitchen suggests mixing with a whisk as makes it much harder to over mix.
In another bowl mix the flour and the baking powder. Whisk the flour mixture into the pumpkin batter, until mixed through.
Pour the mixture into the liners making sure each one is around 3/4 full, although I had some extra batter left at the end so I just topped them all up.
Sprinkle on top of each muffin the cinnamon sugar.
Pop the tray into the oven for around 25 to 30 minutes, until they are golden and puffed up. Leave them to cool in the pan for 5 minutes and then allow them to cool further on a wire rack.
When the muffins were ready I was astounded by the wonderful orange colour, so vivid but so natural. It was a beautiful moist muffin, and the spices were just perfect.
I am not sure if on top of the different spices and the pumpkin I could really taste the brown butter in the final muffin, but I could definitely smell it when they were cooking!
This is definitely our favourite muffin recipe in a while, definitely a keeper.
Pumpkin Muffins
A watched macaron never grows feet.
Or you could say a Coffee Muffins macaron never grows feet. I am writing this blog post munching on failed coffee macarons and feeling pretty sorry for myself (and just a little sick). Five attempts and still no feet.
The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.
This time I have no one to blame, I can’t blame the challenge for being too easy or not seasonal enough, or any one of the other reasons why my previous challenges haven’t been good enough. This time I really tried, gave it different attempts over different weeks and yet I have little more to show for myself than after my first attempt.
Looking back on my first attempt, I may have actually got worse…
Pomegranates always make me think of nights when it is pitch black outside, the fire is on, and I’m sitting in the living room with my mum and sister watching ER. My mum would sit with a pomegranate and divide it up passing over chunks of the bejewelled fruit to each of us.
Seeing pomegranates in stores always provokes that memory but it has been years since I’ve actually bought one, yesterday I finally took the plunge and bought two.
When I heard this month that we would be making our own puff pastry, I was worried. Normally when I need puff pastry I by block and roll it out (or sometimes even buy the pre-rolled versions) it’s so quick and easy. My knowledge of puff pastry was that it would be quite difficult – I don’t have a great track record with pastry at all.
However this is the whole reason as to why I signed up with the Daring Bakers to force me to try what I would never have bothered with before. This doesn’t mean however that I haven’t put this challenge off to the very last minute.
The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.
This blog post is part 2 in a possibly never ending series where I try to find a cupcake frosting I like. I have already tried buttercream filling in my Butterfly Cakes so due to Amanda’s of Amanda’s Cookin’ suggestion my next attempt is to try a cream cheese filling.
It’s that time of the month again, where I realise that although I did my Daring Bakers Challenge weeks ago, I need to dig out the pictures and dredge the bottom of my memory to make some sort of intelligent comment.
The August 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers’ cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.
So this whole cupcake thing? I’m not really sure I get it. I love the cake part but the buttercream filling/topping? I’d rather not bother – all that sugar, yuck!
Anyway since I am the only person on the planet that has this view, I went ahead and made butterfly cakes for my friends. Hoping that when I made them myself that something would click, and I’d love them and fit in with the rest of the world.
I’ll tell you a secret, until this very night I have never tasted the somewhat strange combination of stale bread and summer fruits that makes up one of Britain’s most loved desserts.
Over the past few months the need to finally try this dessert has come over me slowly. It started with the Great British Menu, a TV show that highlights modern twists on some of our favourite british foods. With James Sommerin’s Summer Pudding Trifle and to a lesser extent Nigel Haworth’s Summer Fruit Pudding.
Now that the summer fruits are finally available, and the weather (albeit briefly and in amongst thunder storms) is getting better, the need has become stronger.
Summer Pudding served with Creme Fraiche