Morning Glory Muffin

I think I might be a little out of style here.  Are muffins even IN style now?  I love muffins!  Especially when they are actually cake disguised as something less dessert-ish.  Cake minus the frosting is a muffin in my mind, and a muffin is breakfast.  It's good for you, and it's portable, and it's easy to make and full of all sorts of good things.  Muffins were probably one of the very first things I ever learned to make as a kid.  I was involved with a great bunch of girls who had some ambitious moms!!  I don't think my mom was the ring leader, but she stepped right up and joined in.  We had a 4-H group!  

4-H in the United States is a youth organization administered by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), with the mission of "engaging youth to reach their fullest potential while advancing the field of youth development".^[1] The name represents four personal development areas of focus for the organization: head, heart, hands, and health. The organization has over 6.5 million members in the United States, from ages 5 to 21, in approximately 90,000 clubs.^[2]

Every Tues. and Thurs. we would meet at a different home and a mom would teach us a different skill.  Honestly there are a few things I learned as that 8-9-10 year old little girl, that have stuck with me my whole life.  I wish I could remember how to crochet as well as I did back then, but I do know the reason for  "Just mixing until combined" when I make a muffin.  I remember the demonstrations of over mixing a muffin.  Worm looking tunnels would exist throughout the entire muffin, and the top of the muffin would be pointy.  I learned how to keep the "skin" from forming on a freshly cooked pudding.  I actually learned HOW to make that pudding.  Not just emptying a JELLO pudding box in a bowl and adding milk.

So it may be 30 years later, but I still use those 4-H skills every time I cook:)  I learned to use my HEAD, my HEART, my HANDS, and my HEALTH.  I'd say my experience was a success! These muffins were a success as well.  My 4-H skills came in handy.  Even if they're a little 1990-ish you will love them.  They are so full of goodness, and tastiness you'll make them again next Sat.  Enjoy!

Morning Glory Muffins
recipe adapted from Pillsbury Best Muffins and Quick Breads

1 cup All Purpose or Unbleached Flour

1 cup Whole Wheat Flour

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups shredded, peeled apples

1/2 cup shredded carrots

1/2 cup coconut

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

3/4 cup oil

1/4 cup milk

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 eggs, beaten

DIRECTIONS

Heat oven to 350°F. Line with paper baking cups or grease 18 muffin cups. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup; level off. In large bowl, combine all purpose flour, whole wheat flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Add apples, carrots, coconut, raisins and walnuts; mix well. Add oil, milk, vanilla and eggs; stir just until moistened. Fill lined or greased muffin cups 3/4 full. Bake at 350°F. for 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Immediately remove from pans.

Lemon Poppy Seed Cake

Have you ever felt like you were chasing something elusive?  Something that maybe you just made up in your mind and it doesn't really exist?  I've been chasing this cake since I was 12.  That's a long time.  But with the Easter holiday just passed the quest for this cake came around again.  You see, most years when I was a child, my family would spend Easter in St. George Ut.  Granted this is the same location that gave me my intense dislike of Easter Egg hunts, but it also brought my love for a good Poppy seed Cake.  Every Easter Sunday my family would get all gussied up in our Easter finest, head over to church, and then as soon as it was over, we'd pile into the enormous custom van and head to Vegas baby!  There we'd head to the long line at Caesar's Palace for their famed Sunday Brunch.  I remember my mom always saying how we had just been to Heaven with our Sacrament Service, and now here we were standing in the middle of Babylon.  Hell to be exact.  You know if the end of the world was going to come that day we probably would have been right in the middle of it, but it didn't and I got to eat another few Poppy Seed cakes to last me until the next year.  I took James there on our honeymoon.  He didn't like it, and needless to say I haven't been back to Vegas in 20 years!  So it has been a 20 year draught for these cakes!

They were so moist and delicious, and mini.  You could eat quite a few.  They were baked in a mini muffin tin and were so tasty.  So for years now I've tried a lot of recipes.  Ones out of cake mixes.  Ones with pudding added in.  You name it,  I've tried it.  But last week I gave it another shot.  This was a winner!  Perfection!!  Nothing funky, or fancy, just straight goodness.  I made this cake in a bundt pan, but muffins would work, or two loaves would be lovely too.  So here's to Easter miracles!

Lemon Poppy seed Cake

recipe adapted from The Girl Who Ate Everything

(I owe her my firstborn for this recipe!  Thanks Christy!)

Cake:
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
1 1/8 cups cooking oil
2 1/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups milk
2 T. poppy seeds
zest of 2 lemons
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

Note you can substitute almond extract in the cake and omit the lemon zest if you want an Almond Poppy seed cake.  It would be lovely!

Glaze:
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 c. lemon juice


For the cake: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all of the ingredients together. Pour into greased and floured 12 c. bundt pan.  Bake at 350 for 60-75 minutes.   Insert thin knife in center and make sure it isn't doughy.  The top should spring back when touched.  My cakes usually take 75 minutes.

For the Glaze: Pour all ingredients into a small saucepan and let cook on stove on medium heat until mixture comes to a boil.  Let boil 1 minute.  Remove cake from pan and pour glaze over warm bread. I actually use a pastry brush and brush it on.

Mormon Muffins

There's this great place I used to go to as a kid.  It's called Rainbow Gardens.  It's lovely, and wonderful.  As a kid we'd go bowling there for birthday parties.  They had the best penny candy selection as well as sticker collection.  And they had the best Christmas displays.  You could find all sorts of fun gifts there, or if you really liked someone, you'd get their wedding gift there.  The restaurant inside is famous.  It's where all the ladies would lunch.  My mom and her sisters would go there.  I'd go there with the work girls.  Turkey Enchiladas and a Mormon Muffin is what I always ordered.  The Mormon Muffin was the best part of the whole meal.

I'm not sure why they're called Mormon Muffins.  Maybe we Mormons have the corner on fiber, or maybe it's the muffins wholesomeness.  Just like me.  (I'm sure my mom and James would beg to differ on this point.)  Just teasing, but I can say these muffins are very very tasty!!  This recipe came directly from the Rainbow Gardens website.  They're so kind!  I love a person who shares their deliciousness.  (I feel like a hypocrite saying that since I won't share my GH Bread recipes.  I might go to heck!  Don't judge me to harshly.)  But the recipe is easy and makes a ton of muffins.  I made about 3 dozen enormous muffins.  If you don't fill the muffin cups heaping you'll probably get 4 dozen.  But I like them big, and round, and puffing over the edges.  The muffins freeze well, or you can keep the batter in the fridge for 6 weeks.  It's that kind of recipe.  So trust me on this and make a big batch of goodness.  You're innards will thank you!

Rainbow Gardens

Mormon Muffins

Recipe courtesy of Rainbow Gardens

2 cups boiling water

5 teaspoons baking soda

1 cup shortening

2 cups granulated sugar

4 eggs

5 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 quart buttermilk

4 cups all-bran cereal

2 cups bran flakes

1 cup chopped walnuts

2 c. chopped dates

Directions

Combine water and baking soda. Stir until dissolved. Cool.

In a large mixing bowl, cream sugar and shortening.

Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Add the soda water.

Combine flour and salt and add to cream mixture alternately with buttermilk.

Fold in both cereals and nuts.  At this point let your batter sit for an hour or even better overnight.  At first the batter is rather thin, but as soon as the cereal sogs up a bit it will thicken right up.

Fill greased or paper lined muffin cups full.  Mine are actually heaping full.

Bake at 350°F for 25-30 minutes until they test done.

Muffin batter may be kept for 1 week in refrigerator and baked in smaller batches if desired.

My First Cookbook

Muffin love nuggets.

The cookbook.

This is the very first cookbook I ever bought as a real woman. I was only 20, but I had been married a total of 6 days, and I purchased this book with some wedding money we had received from someone we loved I'm sure. I may only use 1 recipe in the whole book, but it is well worth the purchase price.

I had a room mate down at BYU that first introduced me to the wonders inside the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. She was a beautiful red head who was very domestic and cooked for herself and others while going to college. I wouldn't say anything I did could have been considered cooking or domestic. I was really good at adding water to Krusteez pancake mix and fixing me a pancake that I then slathered with peanut butter and syrup. This wasn't usually a breakfast meal, but dinner. I budgeted $15 a week for groceries, and I was very thankful for the "onion farmer's" daughter roommate who supplied us with cases of onions, and also for the "potato farmer's" daughter roommate who supplied us with tators all year long. I was a forced vegetarian for quite some time as well. Meat's expensive on a summer lifeguarding job budget.

My saving grace was a really nice returned missionary who was desperately trying to get me to realize that I didn't want to "wait" for MY other missionary, but to love him. He would take me to lunch or dinner probably 3-4 times a week. He introduced me to Katsu Curry, sticky rice, and Udon noodles. Thank you Jason! He was such a nice kid, and I feel really bad about using him to keep my tummy full, but he knew where I stood:)

Well back to the Better Homes and Garden Cookbook. One Saturday morning my roommate made the most wonderful muffins for all of us starving students for breakfast. They were white and plain, but rolled in glorious cinnamon sugar. Sometimes there is nothing better than cinnamon sugar. I'm sure one or more of my brother's would have starved to death without Cinnamon Toast in their diets. These muffins were lovely and delicious. I was determined then and there that one day I would be domestic and make my loved ones these wonderful little muffins. But first I must get my hands on the recipe. The recipe had come from within the pages of the famous red and white checked cookbook. I would have one, one day.

The day came a few years later. You know--------6 days after I married James!! I may have not had many culinary skills at that time, but I had learned how to make a perfect muffin when I was 10, in Cooking 4H. I could do this. Let's fast forward 17 years. The muffins were never a huge hit until last week. I don't know, James just didn't have that wonderful muffin moment that I had had. So I didn't make them again until a few Saturday's ago. I made them for my 4 kidlets. James just happened to be out of town. The kids had that same moment of bliss in eating these muffins as I had 17 years earlier. A hit at the Clawson home now. Who cares what James thinks, (even though he ate 4 of them the last time Emma made them.) Emma can make them by herself as well and my life is getting more pleasant by the day. Some guy is going to be lucky to get her.......in 30 years that is!

French Breakfast Puffs

We call them Cinnamon Sugar Muffins

From the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook

1/3 cup butter

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1 1/2 cups flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted

Heat oven to 350ºF. Grease 12 medium muffin cups, 2 1/2x1 1/4 inches.

Mix butter, 1/2 cup sugar and the egg thoroughly in large bowl. Stir in flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg alternately with milk. Divide batter evenly among muffin cups.

Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Mix 1/2 cup sugar and the cinnamon. Roll hot muffins immediately in melted butter, then in sugar-cinnamon mixture. Serve hot. (don't use margarine in these or to dip the muffins in after. It just tastes nasty.)

Blackberry Corn Muffins

When I was a kid there were a few things that I felt I could cook perfectly. I could make a great sweet and sour meatball, chocolate chip cookie and Cup of Noodles. That's it. That was my repertoire. It wasn't until I'd been married a few years that I started branching out a bit, and trying other things. I had to get through college before I ever found time to cook, and since then I just can't seem to get enough. My daughter Emma is a chip off the old block. She loves to cook and try new things.

A few weeks ago J and I were at a conventions and favorite cousin Jessica and her new husband Kade came to baby sit the kids. Emma loved us being gone. Every night she would call and ask how to make something different for dinner. It was never a simple little something. It was things like Shrimp Scampi, and Zuppa Tuscan. Can you imagine a 13 year old cooking like that. She does great too. Sunday she decided to make muffins to go along with Sunday dinner. Blackberry Corn Muffins. Yum!! (Can I just tell you the beef tenderloin roast was the best ever but I didn't get a single pic. We were just too hungry. Next time I make it I promise to post it because it was the best Sunday dinner I think I've ever made.) These muffins are so good and so pretty. I have Ziploc gallon bags full of our berry crop from last summer in the freezer and they work absolutely wonderfully. Blackberry is our favorite, but dang, raspberry or blueberry would be good as well. I like using frozen berries since it's just simple to do. Stir them in really fast and scoop the muffins immediately and there isn't any berry bleeding. That's a good thing. Perfect yellow corn muffin with beautiful, big, fat, juicy berries poking out. A good slab of butter and a generous stream of honey is the best route to go for eating these lovelies. They are fantastic reheated in the microwave the next morning for breakfast too.

The recipe comes from one of my favorite cookbooks. "Fresh Everyday" by Sara Foster. It is a great cookbook full of really pretty, seasonally fresh, and just down right yummy stuff. She's got some great soups, and salads, and other great things, but the Blackberry Corn Muffins is permanently earmarked. Actually the book just falls open to this page. That's how you know a recipe is good. Thanks Sara Foster. One day I'm going to visit your market and we can make muffins together. And thanks to Emma too. Some boy is going to be extremely lucky to get this girl one day. I'm not letting her go anytime soon though. She's a complete neat freak and that is priceless at my house:) I'll keep her as long as I can. She's priceless. Love ya Em!

Blackberry Corn Muffins

From Fresh Everyday by Sara Foster

1 1/2 c. corn meal

1 1/2 c. flour

3/4 c. sugar

2 t. baking powder

1 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

2 eggs beaten slightly

3/4 c. buttermilk

3/4 canola oil

1 t. vanilla

1 1/2 c. fresh or frozen blackberries

Preheat oven to 375' F. Line 12 muffin tins with liners and spray pan with Pam. Stir all the dry ingredients together until combined. In a separate bowl add all the wet ingredients and mix them thoroughly. Pour the wet into the dry and mix until just combined. There's nothing wrong with a few flour chunks. Gently fold in the blackberries. Scoop batter between the muffin cups. They are pretty full. Bake muffins for 25-30 mins. or until they spring back when touched in the center. Allow to cool for about 5 mins. in the pan and then enjoy with lots of butter and honey.