Muffins

My favorite muffin recipe is jasdip's blueberry muffins. They're perfect as is, but I sometimes like to change it up by adding coconut to the mix and adding streusel to the tops.

Sometimes I buy blueberry muffin mix to have on hand when Alyssa wants to bake something. We started baking them when she was 3 I think. It is easier to use a mix with someone that wants to do it all herself :) I let her grease the mini muffin pans that we bake them in and she cracks the eggs but lets me put them in the mix. I measure the other things and she pours them in, she mixes and I make sure it is all mixed. I always let her take them home to eat on but of course when they first come of the oven we both eat some. Now that she is 4 one of these days we will bake some from scratch. She will be 5 this coming February.

Sue

We have muffins for breakfast every Saturday :-). Mini-, jumbo-, regular, and muffin tops. Such a lovely tradition since there are so many wonderful recipes to choose from. Even going gluten-free didn't make a difference with this tradition.

When it's hot outside, I bake them in my Convection/Microwave Oven or Solar Oven. Using silicon muffin cups, I can bake 12-18 regular-size muffins on a pizza pan in the Convection/Microwave Oven. Or you can usually bake 6 in a toaster oven if you have a 6-cup muffin tin, and more if you use silicon muffin cups. Just place them on the baking sheet for your toaster oven.

I bake a number of "muffin" entrees (often using a baking-mix base like Bisquick - I make my own gluten-free mix), and I keep these in the freezer for quick meals and hubby's lunches at work.

There are also great savory dinner muffins for a light meal with a salad, cheese and fruit (a better replacement for elderly people who often resort to cold cereal or ice cream). Savory dinner muffins are a good place to use homemade vegetable broth, or top them with some leftover pesto, marinara sauce, or shredded cheese.

-Grainlady

I'm not a good baker, but have I've always been a fan of banana walnut muffins, but over Easter Costco there was a new pound cake muffin to use with strawberries and even though it's fairly plain, it is so moist and yummy....a great foundation for berry or any fruit topping.

I love putting a big blob of cream cheese right in the middle of the muffin. Pour in half the batter drop in blob, add remaining batter. And sometimes I put a surprise in with the cream cheese like a strawberry, blueberry, piece of peach or nectarines. You never know till you take a bite what your surprise will be. Surprise muffins!

I do the cream cheese blobs in my homemade corn bread too, omg so great.

This is the Plain Muffin recipe I have been using for 60 years.

2 cups all purpose flur

2 teaspoons baking powder

2/3 teaspoon of salt

4 tablespoons sugar

1 cup of milk

1 egg, well beaten

4 tablespoons of butter, melted

Sift flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. combine milk, beaten egg, and melted butter. Combine the liquid ingredients with the dry ingredients. Stir only until all dry ingredients are moist. The secret of good muffins is not to stir them too much. Never beat. Pour into greased muffin pans or cups. Yields 10 to 12 muffins. Bake in a preheated oven at 425 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes. You can make these into blueberry muffins by adding 1 cup of fresh blueberries or 3/4 cup of well drained canned or frozen blueberries.

For Prune Muffins add, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg to flour mixture. At the last blend in 3/4 cup well drained cooked and coarse chopped prunes.

From the Betty Furness Westinghouse Cook Book.

My husband does not eat muffins so I don't bake them very often. The plain ones are my favorite.

Sue

Thank you Sue!

These make a large batch and taste great.

Banana Macadamia Nut Muffins

TOTAL TIME: Prep: 15 min. Bake: 20
min. YIELD:24 servings

Ingredients

·
3 cups all-purpose flour

·
2 cups sugar

·
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

·
1 teaspoon baking soda

·
1 teaspoon salt

·
3 eggs

·
1 cup canola oil

·
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

·
3 medium ripe bananas, mashed

·
1 cup flaked coconut

·
1 can (8 ounces) crushed pineapple, drained

·
1 cup macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped

Directions

·
1. In a
large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking soda and salt. In
another bowl, combine the eggs, oil and vanilla. Stir into dry ingredients just
until moistened. Fold in the bananas, coconut and pineapple.

·
2. Fill
greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full. Sprinkle with nuts. Bake at
375° for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes
before removing from pans to wire racks. Yield: 2 dozen.

Mmmmm. Sounds wonderful!! I LOVE macadamia nuts!

I like Glenda's Refrigerator Bran Muffins. You mix a huge amount of batter and it keeps in the refrigerator for 6 weeks. You can bake just one or two, and have fresh muffins every day. I also like the Malt-O-Meal muffin recipe that is printed on the box of cereal. And lastly we all enjoy the Peabody Inn Vanilla Muffins recipe that I found in an article that said people drive from far and wide for these muffins. I will look up the recipe and edit it into this message.

Here's a recipe I found online some time ago. I could not resist seeing what a muffin that is called a Dirt Bomb tasted like. Since I still have them in my computer, here is the recipe:

Dirt
Bombs
Yields: 12 muffins*

3 cups
all purpose flour, minus 3 tablespoons
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamon
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup whole milk **

Topping
***

3/4 cups
unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Preheat
oven to 400º F. Place
the rack in the center position. Generously grease a 12-cup standard muffin
pan.

Sift the
flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and cardamon into a mixing bowl. In another
bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Scrape the bowl down
half way through. Mix in the eggs. Add the dry ingredients alternately with the
milk in two additions, mixing gently by hand to incorporate all the flour. The
batter will be on the stiff side, but airy. Don’t over mix or beat the batter
as this will make the muffins tough. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan,
without smoothing the tops. Bake for about 25 minutes or until a cake tester
inserted in the center comes out clean. As soon as the muffins are cool enough
to handle, turn them out onto a wire rack.

Add the
melted butter to a bowl. In another bowl, mix the sugar and cinnamon. Dip the
muffins (top, sides and bottom) in the butter, using a pastry brush -if
necessary- to cover areas not buttered by dipping. Immediately roll the muffins
in the cinnamon sugar mixture. Serve warm or at room temperature.

*I've
made this twice, and both times, this recipe has yielded 16 muffins instead of
12.

**I
substituted whole buttermilk for whole milk because I always have it on hand
and prefer it for baking.

*** The
amounts listed for the sugar and cinnamon are not quite enough to coat all the
muffins, so I recommend you double it.

_______

Malt-O-Meal Magic Muffins

1 1/4 c flour

3/4 c Malt-O-Meal

1/2 c sugar

3/4 c milk

1/4 c vegetable oil

1 egg

1 Tbsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Heat oven to 400 degrees. In large mixing bowl, combine all ingredients and stir together till all are moistened. Fill greased muffin cups 3/4 full. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes. 1 doz.

_____

Peabody Inn Vanilla Muffins

2 c flour

1 c sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 Tbsp melted butter, cooled

1 c milk

1 egg

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease muffin tins well.

1) Sift flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into large bowl.

2) Add melted butter to milk and egg. Beat to mix well. Add vanilla

3) Make a well in the center of the flour mixture. Pour milk mixture in all at once. Stir with fork only until moistened. Do not over mix or beat.

4) Quickly spoon batter into muffin cups filling each slightly more than half full.

5) Bake 15 minutes for mini muffin pans; 18-20 minutes for full size muffins. Remove immediately from pans and serve hot. 12 regular muffins or 30 minis. These muffins have a lovely hint of a crunchy exterior when you bite into them the first day. That crunchiness disappears if you have left overs for another day.

Sol's dirt bombs are the one muffin my son repeatedly requests outside of the blueberry muffins.

I make bran muffins most often. We also love rhubarb muffins, sour cream and pineapple. I love oatmeal muffins, but some are real dry. I'm still looking for the perfect oatmeal muffin. I make the blueberry ones for hubby; I don't like blueberries.

I love the convenience of muffins; they freeze perfectly.

I like to use bisquick. They now have gluten free bisquick by the way.

Iwant to try these muffins! Streusel coffee cake muffins! Yummy

bisquick-coffee-cake-muffins.

sheilajoyce, I was just thinking about those refrigerator muffins.

Back in my school teaching/family days I almost always had a batter of the refrigerator raisin bran muffins ready to cook up.

Six-Week Muffins

2 teaspoons baking soda
4 cups buttermilk
Four eggs, beaten
3 cups sugar
1 cup oil
5 cups flour
2 teaspoons salt
One (16-oz.) package Raisin Bran cereal

Mix baking soda and buttermilk together in bowl. Add eggs, sugar, oil, flour and salt; mix well. Stir in cereal. Spoon into nonstick muffin cups. Bake at 425 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes or until muffins test done. Store remaining batter in airtight container in refrigerator. No need to stir, just scoop and drop in greased muffin tins. Nice hot muffins for breakfast to get you going.

I bet Glenda's Refridgerator Bran muffins are the "Six Weeks Muffins" from the '70's. I currently have a big bowl of batter in my fridge for a relative who is healing from a broken femur, and just sent off half a dozen before I sat down (third set from this batch). Every time I hear that ad for some kind of gonzo medicine that's supposed to work on opiate-caused elimination issues, I laugh a little. Perhaps there are long term (more than a few months) sufferers who need something stronger, but Six Weeks Muffins are excellent for the problem. It's a buttermilk batter with bran flakes and All-Bran and a lot of dried fruit. The muffins are moist and tasty and have the quadfecta of regularity: bran, sugar, fiber and a little grease. :) The patient, yesterday, was anxious about the location of the last muffin for the morning and it was moved to the bedside table--along with reassurances that more muffins were coming today.

I used to make muffins. Apple muffins. Oatmeal muffins. Whatever was in the cupboard muffins. Then muffins became the "it" thing and grew and became cakes and then became muffin tops. I stopped making muffins, except for the magic Six Weeks Muffins for those who need them. :) I bet with all this cupcake mania, muffins might get a reset as a less cakey, more quickbread, kind of thing, and of a reasonable size.

Lucille, I used to bake improvisational cakes the way you're doing muffins. Basic buttercake proportions and ingredients, mustn't forget the baking powder, and the rest is open to interpretation. Sounds like fun! I hope you'll keep us posted with your favorite new combinations!

P.S., I received a very pretty Polish Pottery six muffin stoneware pan as a gift awhile back. It's kind of perfect for small batch baking. Since I'm sending them away, I use papers (prevents damage to the muffins in transit and keeps them from drying out). I can take them out of the oven when they're still just a tad soft and they'll finish in the pan without the corners drying out. And it goes right in the dishwasher so doesn't waste water. And it's pretty. :)

Phyllis_mn, your muffin recipe is much like the Hummingbird Muffins I sometimes make but with out coconut. They are good.

Sue

ravencajun....thank for for these two tips....I plan to try both.....Cream cheese in my muffin batter and coffee cake muffins.......awesome tips.

They all sound good! Plllog, I have a Polish Pottery bread pan that I love!

I just got back here and see that Glenda was posting her recipe at the same time as I was posting about the Six Weeks Muffins. As is often the case, we have slightly different versions. Just for comparison's sake, here's mine (original came from a family friend):

6 Weeks Muffins

Yield: 4-6 dozen

• Dissolve 5 tsp. baking soda in 2 cups of boiling
  water and set aside to cool. Make
  sure all the soda dissolves.
• 1 c. shortening (butter or margarine or both, or shortening (or oil, as Glenda has))
  
• 2 c. sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 qt. buttermilk
• 4 c. flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 4 c. Kellogg's All-Bran cereal
• 2 c. Kellogg's 40% Bran Flakes (any bran flakes)
  
• 2 c. chopped dates and raisins

They don't make 40% Bran Flakes anymore, though Kellogg makes "All-Bran flakes" which I think are the same thing. Any bran flakes work, even raisin bran if you adjust the quantities for the raisins.

Some people like an extra cup
of dates/raisins. This changes the
muffins from being more fiber to more sugar.

1. Cream shortening and sugar.
2. Add eggs and soda/water
3. Add remaining ingredients, gradually, and mix well.
4. Keep batter in an air tight, well sealed container, up to 6
   weeks in the refrigerator.
5. After refrigerating do not stir again.
6. Spoon into greased (sprayed) muffin tins.
7. Bake at 375 for 25 minutes.

Note: You do not have to refrigerate before baking
the first batch, but it's easier to handle the batter if you do.