Saturday, August 13, 2011

Muffin Recipe Post

Here is the muffin recipe post I promised!  I wrote about the awesome muffins I made before going on vacation last week and said I would post the recipe after I got back.  Well, here I am!  We had an awesome week at the beach.  We basically did nothing except sleep and lay on the beach and eat.  My kind of week!

We got back around noon today and I unpacked and hit up the grocery store.  I made a super easy dinner which I will share as well!  Josh decided to call it "Ranchellini":

-Cook/boil pre-made cheese tortellini according to package.
-Add Hidden Valley Ranch dressing (to your taste)
-Add roasted red peppers (mine were from a jar)
-Add grated parmesan cheese

Ta-da!  10 minute dinner and it's delicious!  We also talked about adding chopped bacon next time. Mmm...

So, on to the muffins.  First I made yogurt blueberry muffins that I found on The Pioneer Woman.  I will copy the recipe from her site and write my notes/changes in italics.


The Awesome-est Blueberry Muffins
3 cups minus 2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
Heavy pinch of salt
Dash of Nutmeg
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1 generous cup plain, unflavored yogurt (throw in extra if you want) *I used plain lowfat Greek yogurt.  Gotta get your protein!
2 cups fresh blueberries
Vanilla Extract
Softened Butter, for muffin tins *I just used paper baking cups because I knew I would be traveling with them.
Turbinado sugar (optional) *I don't know what this is, but I substituted brown sugar in its place.
Preheat oven to 385 degrees.
In a large bowl sift flour, baking soda, nutmeg, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
In another large bowl whisk together sugar, oil, cap-ful of vanilla, egg, and yogurt. Add the dry ingredients and stir to a count of 10.
Add blueberries, reserving 1/2 cup, to mixture and stir 3 times.
Add mixture to well-buttered (or paper lined) muffin pans. Sprinkle remaining berries on top and press down lightly. Sprinkle turbinado sugar (or brown sugar) over top. 
Bake 20 to 25 minutes and allow to cool completely.
Yogurt-Blueberry Sauce:
In small saucepan over medium-low heat, stir together 1 cup frozen or fresh blueberries (if using fresh, add 2 tsp water) and 1 tsp sugar. Cook until berries pop and liquid begins to thicken. Dump in heaping 1/4 cup plain yogurt and stir to combine. Drizzle on muffins.



Here is the final product (in case you forgot from last week):



As you can see, I did not make the blueberry yogurt sauce to pour over the top.  That's mainly because we were going to be eating early (5am) and probably eating most of them in the car.  But my dad is coming to visit later this week and I am going to make them again, but with the sauce.  I will update about that!

On to the chocolate chip muffins!  Josh's brother and our family friend Nicole are both chocolate fanatics.  So I knew I had to make the chocolate chip muffins!  I found this recipe on allrecipes.com.  Although anyone can post on this site, there are always tons of reviews, ratings on recipes, and comments about how other people changed parts of the recipe.  So I usually glance over all of that before choosing a recipe.


INGREDIENTS:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup white sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup sour cream (based on reviewers' comments)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
3/4 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
3 tablespoons white sugar
2 tablespoons brown sugar
DIRECTIONS:
1.Heat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C). Grease bottoms only of 12 muffin cups or line with baking cups.
2.In a medium bowl, combine flour, 1/2 cup sugar, baking powder, chocolate chips, and salt; mix well. In a small bowl, combine milk, sour cream, oil and egg; blend well. Add dry ingredients all at once; stir just until dry ingredients are moistened (batter will be lumpy.)
3.Fill cups 2/3 full. Sprinkle tops of muffins before baking with a combination of 3 tablespoons sugar and 2 tablespoon brown sugar.
4.Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 1 minute before removing from pan. Serve warm


I added the sour cream because a lot of people wrote that the recipe, while delicious, was a little dry.  This was their solution, but I still thought they were too dry for my taste.  If I make these again, I will probably add more sour cream (or maybe try yogurt) or more vegetable oil.

The final product:


My favorite part about these muffins was that the sugar topping rose so high.  Just looking makes your mouth water!


I am making some awesome past dishes for dinner and lunch while my dad is here and will hopefully share recipes later on.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the recipes - I'll definitely be trying these out ASAP!

    ReplyDelete