Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Have you ever cooked/baked something only because you really wanted to try a new ingredient, or perhaps cook in your new pot or pan, use your brand new ice cream maker, creme brûlée torch, or some other appliance? Well, this muffin was inspired not by an ingredient or a cooking utensil/appliance, but by a beautiful ceramic dish that I wanted to present it in! I was determined to make something pretty to put on this dish as soon as I received it in the mail. A fresh citrusy muffin adorned with little chocolate flowers seemed perfect to go with the lovely red mushroom decoration on the plate.

 

A little bit background on this plate that I’m raving about - My friend Maitreyee makes beautiful ceramic kitchenware & decorative pieces, and she was nice enough to customize this plate for me. You can check out her shop, YayClay (love the name!) on Etsy, or Facebook.

Ingredients: (Makes 18)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup milk

3 Tbsp lemon juice

1/2 cup sour cream

¼ cup unsweetened applesauce

¼ cup canola oil

1-1¼  cup white sugar

Zest from 2 lemons

1tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs
4 tsp poppy seeds

(Oil + Applesauce can be substituted with ½ cup butter)

 

Preheat oven to 350°F and line a muffin pan with cupcake liners.

 

Sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda in a bowl. Add salt, mix and set aside.

 

In another bowl mix milk, lemon juice and sour cream, and set aside.

 

In a large bowl, cream together oil, applesauce, sugar, vanilla extract and lemon zest. Add eggs and beat well. Alternately add the flour mixture and the wet ingredients, mixing gently as you fold in the flour. Do not overbeat. Fold in poppy seeds.

 

Pour batter into the lined muffin tin (~¾ full), and bake in preheated oven for ~20-25 minutes until golden brown in color with tops that bounce back when touched.

 

If you want to get a little fancy and add a glaze, mix ½ cup powdered sugar with just enough lemon juice (or milk/water) to get a thick paste. It only takes a couple teaspoons of liquid. Spread or drizzle the glaze on the muffin while it is still warm. Sprinkle some lemon zest and poppy seeds on top for a beautiful presentation and an extra boost of citrus flavor.

~Gayatri

 

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Blueberry Banana Muffins

I often find myself in the position of trying to make use of super ripe bananas in creative ways, such as banana chips, oatmeal, or rolled up and baked in a pie crust with walnuts and brown sugar, kind of like an empanada. Most often, though, I make some sort of banana bread treat - banana split bars, banana bread, banana bread with walnuts, banana muffins (with or without nuts and/or chocolate chips), chocolatey-banana muffins...lots of banana-bread-type stuff, many of which use the same basic recipe. Recently I made blueberry banana muffins, which got some pretty great reviews! Here’s my tried-and-true banana bread recipe with a blueberry twist.

Ingredients: (about 2 dozen muffins, or 2 loaves)

Basic recipe:

2 cups whole wheat flour

⅛ tsp salt

2 tsp baking soda

1 cup butter/margarine (I used ¾ cup canola oil, ¼ cup applesauce)

2 cups sugar (I used half white and half loosely-packed brown sugar)

4 medium bananas, ripe

4 eggs, beaten (I used EggBeaters)

Optional add-ins:

~¾-1 cup blueberries (I used frozen - no need to defrost)

~¾-1 cup chopped walnuts

~¾-1 cup dark chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350F. In a small bowl, coarsely mash the bananas.

Sift flour, salt, and baking soda together in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together butter/margarine and sugar until smooth. Stir in bananas and eggs and mix until well-blended.

Pour wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix just until combined. Stir in your add-ins of choice (this time I only used blueberries for the add-in). 

Spoon the batter into a lined muffin pan, filling each cup about ⅔-¾ full. Bake 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

If you want to make bread loaves instead of muffins, divide batter into 2 greased 4"x8" loaf pans and bake 50-60 minutes, until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. 

Let cool before serving.

~Karla


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Simple and versatile banana bread recipe in the form of delicious moist blueberry banana muffins!http://cooksofcakeandkindness.blogspot.com/2015/06/blueberry-banana-muffins.html

Posted by The Cooks of Cake and Kindness on Monday, June 29, 2015

Chocolatey-Banana Muffins

Every once in a while there is an overload of bananas in my kitchen :-). So far, banana nut bread has been my primary go-to recipe to use up ripe bananas. There are a few other things I like to make as well, including shira (Indian semolina pudding), banana pancakes, bread pudding, and good old shikran (a simple Maharashtrian dessert – sliced/mashed banana, milk, sugar, cardamom powder). But these typically don’t call for as much banana as the banana bread. So whenever I had more than one old banana to get through, I would always turn to the banana bread…. until last weekend. I realized that I was a little bored of the banana bread and wanted to try something slightly different, so I decided to add chocolate to it. But I didn’t quite know what else to change in the recipe to adjust for this addition, so I kind of just played with the ingredients till the batter tasted good and seemed to have good consistency… and it actually turned out pretty nice! This can be baked as a loaf, but I think it is better as muffins because of the light and moist texture.

Ingredients: (Makes approximately 18 regular sized muffins.)

1 cup sugar

2/3 cup butter

2 eggs

2 cups flour (all purpose/wheat)

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

a pinch of salt

2/3 cup buttermilk (See note below)

2 medium-sized ripe bananas (mashed well)

3/4 cup melted dark chocolate

chocolate chips (optional)

chopped walnuts (optional)

Heat oven to 340 F. Line muffin pan with liners or grease the pan.  Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a small bowl (sift if necessary).

Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and beat until combined. (Do not beat after this step. Use a spatula to mix ingredients). 

Add the flour mixture and buttermilk. Mix well with a spatula. Add the melted chocolate and bananas, and mix until combined. Add chocolate chips and walnuts and mix well.

Fill the muffin cups ¾ full and bake for ~22 min or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. If you wish to sprinkle chocolate chips on top, sprinkle them about 15 min after putting the pan into the oven.

~Gayatri

Note: If you don’t have buttermilk, use 1 Tbsp. lemon juice/vinegar for every cup of milk. Mix them well and let stand for about 5 min.

(Seriously!) Healthy Oat Chocolate Muffins

Our good friends Mike and Erika gifted a beautiful teapot for Karla’s wedding last fall, and we had been planning to have a tea party for a while so we could use it. So a couple weekends ago we got together to have refreshing tea with cookies and muffins. That was my first attempt at baking oat muffins, which turned out okay, but not quite how I wanted. They were not as moist as I thought they would be, and the texture was a bit dense. So after making some modifications to the recipe (and a few spills and burns later), I am pretty happy with the result – a light and moist chocolate muffin, which really is healthy!

Ingredients (Makes ~12 regular or ~36 mini muffins)

1 ¾ cup old fashioned oats

¾ cup unsweetened cocoa

½ tsp cream of tartar (or 2 tsp. vinegar)

1 ½ tsp baking powder

1 ½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

2/3 cup agave nectar (or 1 cup granulated sugar)

½ cup unsweetened applesauce

½ cup yogurt (I used low fat)

3 egg whites

1 tsp vanilla extract

2/3 cup hot water (1 cup water if using granulated sugar instead of agave nectar)

Chocolate chips (optional)

Heat oven to 350 F. Line a muffin pan with muffin liners (or prepare any other baking pan by lightly greasing).

In a food processor, grind all the dry ingredients together (except chocolate chips). Add the wet ingredients and blend. The hot water should be added in the end, just before you start blending, or you might lose all the fizz from the baking soda which helps with the airy texture.

Fold in the chocolate chips in the batter. Fill the muffin cups ¾ full, and bake for 10 min. After 10 min, sprinkle chocolate chips on top of the muffins, and bake for another 3-4 min, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out with some cooked batter stuck to it (not liquid!). Do not wait for the toothpick to come out clean, or the muffins might be too dry.

~Gayatri

Savory Cornmeal Muffins

The weather has been awful for the past couple days so Purdue had cancelled classes. I didn’t dare to venture out in the freezing cold to go to the lab, and there is only so much work that I could do from home. After watching The Office on Netflix for about 4 hours, I had to do something productive! Baking seemed like a good way to kill time as it generally takes a while to bake something and there is also a lot of cleaning involved :). We’ve had a packet of cornmeal in our freezer for a while, so I thought of experimenting with it and cornmeal muffins with soup seemed perfect for a snow day. They turned out really good and I’ll definitely be making more of these in the future.

Recipe adapted from: http://www.cooksimple.com

Ingredients (for 12 muffins)

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup wheat flour

1 tbsp sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 egg (Didn’t have eggs, so I used Egg Beaters. Egg whites can be used as well.)

3/4 cup milk

1/4 cup oil

2 tbsp melted butter/margarine

~1.5 cups chopped vegetables (I used peas, carrots, green and red pepper and green beans. Any other vegetables can be used as well.)

Preheat oven to 400 F. Mix the dry ingredients (cornmeal, wheat flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and pepper) in a bowl. In another bowl, mix egg, milk, oil and butter and then slowly add the liquid to the dry ingredients. Stir until mixed. Add the chopped vegetables to the batter and mix well. Grease muffin tins and fill each cup ~3/4 full. Bake for ~25 minutes until golden brown.

That’s the generic recipe, but it is pretty versatile. You can add your favorite spices, herbs or cheese to the batter. Enjoy the warm muffins with soup, chili, or just some butter.

~Gayatri