Pumpkin Muffins

It has finally started to get cold in New York. I'm so excited, because I love wearing sweaters, and scarves, and boots and everything associated with the cold. In fact, the only thing that I have bought since moving here - clothes wise - are some incredibly warms sweaters from Housing Works. Well anyway, now that the colder are has settled in, I figured it was time to bake some pumpkin muffins. Pumpkins is one of my favorite plants ever. Questions - a vegetable, fruit, or just a squash? I feel it's one of those things that kind of pushes the boundaries. At work, they have pumpkin truffles, which are AMAZING!! I eat one almost every day that I go into work. So this morning, I woke up - early in fact - to bake some muffins. Now as I've said before, my oven here in my dorm room is very faulty, so I turned the oven up a little high then 350 because I was worried they did not bake. When the first batch came out, they were a little darker then usual, but still delicious. The second batch I eyed a little more carefully and took them out the moment they started to brown. In my opinion, they were much much much better. Charlotte said they were just as good as the first batch, so I guess we all just like our muffins at different consistencies. Either way, I will definitely be making these again. RECIPE FOR PUMPKIN MUFFINS Adapted from Gourmet Magazine INGREDIENTS:


• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 
1 tsp baking powder
• 
1 cup canned solid-pack pumpkin
• 
1/3 cup vegetable oil

• 2 large eggs
• 
1 tsp pumpkin-pie spice (I ended up using Apple Spice, just about the same)
• 
1 1/4 cups plus 1 Tbsp sugar

• 1/2 tsp baking soda

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1 tsp cinnamon

DIRECTIONS:


1. Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven toe 350F. Put liners in muffin cups.
2. Whisk together flour and baking powder in a small bowl.
3. Whisk together pumpkin, oil, eggs, pumpkin-pie spice, 1.25 cups sugar, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl until smooth, then whisk in flour mixture until just combined.
4. Stir together cinnamon and remaining 1 tablespoon sugar in another bowl.
5. Divide batter among muffin cups (each should be about 3/4 full), then sprinkle tops with cinnamon-sugar mixture. Bake until puffed and golden brown and a wooden pick or skewer inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes.
6. Cool in pan on a rack 5 minutes, then transfer muffins from pan to rack and cool to warm or room temperature.

Strawberry Muffins

On my new health kick (Ha) I bought yogurt, cottage cheese, strawberries, etc... All healthy things. Well, when I opened the top to the yogurt, I discovered a recipe for strawberry muffins that looked quite delicious. No oil, whole wheat flour, and very little sugar. Since my parents were out of town, and it was the end of Passover, I pounced at the chance to make something new that I had never tried before. Well, the final verdict is, they are easy to make but they don't have so much flavor. The fresh strawberries make them a little more wet than most muffins and they didn't have much else by way of flavor. They are certainly an easy breakfast item - I put half in the freezer to toast some morning - but I'm not sure I would make them again. From the tops, they look just like plain muffins, but I promise that they have strawberries in them.

Ingredients

· 1 cup all-purpose flour

· 1 cup whole wheat flour

· ½ cup sugar

· 1 ½ teaspoons baking soda

· 2 eggs

· 1 cup plain Stonyfield Farm Yogurt (I used French vanilla)

· ¼ cup melted butter

· 1 teaspoon vanilla

· 1 cup chopped strawberries – fresh or frozen

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Grease a 12 muffin tin or line it with paper baking cups.

2. In a large bowl, sift together flour, sugar and baking soda.

3. In another bowl, stir together eggs, yogurt, melted butter and vanilla until blended.

4. Toss the strawberries with the flour mixture.

5. Pour the egg mixture into the flour mixture and stir until the flour is just moistened. The batter will be lumpy.

6. Spoon the batter into the muffin cups. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown.

Banana Nut Muffins

So every few weeks or so we bring in muffins to my history class because it's first period of the day. Last time I brought in cupcakes which were so good, but I figured cupcakes aren't the best breakfast food, so this time iI decided to make muffins, specifically banana nut ones. The recipe came from the cookbook How to Cook Everything. It was very simple, but since it called for molasses instead of sugar and less milk because of the bananas, it was very thick, so in the end, I needed to add about 1/2 cup milk more then the recipe called for. INGREDIENTS *3 tablespoons melted butter or canola oil plus some for greasing muffin tin *2 cups all purpose flour *¼ cup molasses or honey *½ tsp salt *3 tsp baking powder *1 egg *1/4 cup milk *1 cup mashed ripe bananas *½ cup roughly chopped walnuts (optional) 1. Preheat oven to 400* F. Grease a standard 12-cup muffin tin or line with muffin liners. 2. Mix together dry ingredients in a bowl. 3. In a separate bowl, beat together the egg, milk, butter or oil, molasses and banana. 4. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients into it. Using a large spoon or rubber spatula, combine the ingredients swiftly, stirring and folding rather than beating, and stopping as soon as all the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter should be lumpy, not smooth, and thick but quite moist; add more milk or other liquid if necessary. 5. Spoon the batter into the muffin tins, filling them about 2/3 of the way full and handling the batter a little as possible. 6. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the muffins are nicely browned and a toothpick inserted into the center of one of them comes out clean. 7. Remove from the over and let rest for 5 minutes before taking them out of the tin.