Tag Archives: muffins

Weekend Baking: ABC, 1-2-3 Sourdough Muffins

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I’m happy to report my sourdough starter from Jan Buckner is alive and well. With time spent in a bowl on the kitchen counter and in a jar in my refrigerator, the bubbling starter has kept me busy baking.

Most recently I’ve been enjoying moist muffins filled with grated apple and blueberries. That’s the A and B. The C comes from cinnamon and coriander, giving the muffins a zesty flavor with a subtle hint of pepper.

ABC Muffins are easy to make and easy to eat. They disappear 1-2-3!

May your weekend be filled with autumn sunshine and warm ABC Muffins.

They’re great with ice cream, too.

ABC (Apple, Blueberry, Cinnamon and Coriander) Sourdough Muffins

  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 cup bubbling sourdough starter
  • 1 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen
  • 1/2 cup grated apple

Topping:

  • 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/3 cup chilled butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease muffin tin or prepare with paper liners.

Sift flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, coriander and sugar into mixing bowl. In another bowl, lightly beat egg with fork. Add oil and blend. Add sourdough starter and stir to blend.

Pour sourdough mixture into bowl of dry ingredients. Stir to blend. Gently fold in grated apple and blueberries. Spoon batter into prepared pan.

Mix Topping by combining flour, brown sugar and cinnamon in bowl. Cut butter into small chunks and add to ingredients in bowl. Use fingers to work butter into dry ingredients to create a crumbly mixture. Sprinkle Topping generously over batter in muffin tin.

Bake in preheated 400-degree oven for 20 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick poked into center of muffin comes out completely clean. Allow muffins to cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan and allow to cool completely on wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature. Makes 12 muffins.

Tips from the cook

  • You won’t need all of the Topping for these muffins. Extra Topping can be stored in the freezer, ready to be sprinkled over the next batch of muffins.
  • Bake some batter in well-buttered glass custard cups. Serve with a scoop of premium vanilla bean ice cream.
  • Enjoy other sourdough recipes I’ve shared at these links:

Sourdough Pancakes

Sourdough French Bread

Janice Buckner’s Sourdough Coffee Cake

 

Weekend Baking: Snickerdoodle Muffins

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The first cooking classes I taught in Bemidji took place in a cozy coffee shop housed in an old, refurbished building downtown. As soon as the last cup of coffee had been served for the day and the closed sign hung on the door, I would slide the cash register off the counter to make way for the two electric burners I stored in the back room. There was no stove in this coffee shop.

The small, heavy tables would get pushed around on the wood floor until they were arranged just right, giving my students plenty of room to move around as they worked together in the participation cooking classes.

I’d preheat the oven, sharpen my Wusthof knives and set out mixing bowls and plenty of kitchen tools. Then, I’d wait for 8 to 10 eager students to arrive. Mostly women would come for an evening of cooking, learning, eating and socializing. Every once in a while, a guy would show up in class.

One of those food-loving guys was DeeJay. He became a regular in the cooking classes and we became friends. This guy can cook. He’s an expert at creating appetizers that look too beautiful to eat. But you just can’t hold back. Each bite brings a sigh of satisfaction.

His cooking classmates and I almost cried when he told us his partner, Steve, was stuck on cottage cheese. As much as DeeJay cooked, Steve would eat only cottage cheese.

Times have changed. That was years ago. Steve has not only expanded the list of foods he enjoys, he actually bakes muffins. Recently, DeeJay told me about the wonderful Snickerdoodle Muffins Steve makes. Steve shared his recipe with me and gave me permission to share it with you.

The muffin batter is not at all complicated to mix together — cream the butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla, sift the dry ingredients and add them alternately with buttermilk and sour cream. Easy.

Here’s where ordinary stops and unique begins. Scoops of batter are plopped into a bowl of cinnamon-sugar. When the plop is entirely coated with the sweet, spicy mixture, it goes into a paper-lined muffin tin.

As the muffins bake, the tops crack just as snickerdoodle cookies do as they spread out on a baking sheet in a hot oven.

Steve’s Snickerdoodle Muffins will melt in your mouth, whether you eat them while they are still warm from the oven when the kitchen is fragrant with cinnamon, or wait until the next day. The warm aroma of cinnamon was still in my kitchen the next morning when I padded out of my bedroom in search of a Snickerdoodle Muffin.

Steve said he thinks the sour cream and cream of tartar add a wonderful taste. He always uses buttermilk instead of whole milk because the three ingredients seem to work well together.

What Steve finds most difficult about his recipe is making even-sized scoops of batter and rolling them in the cinnamon-sugar. He said it’s a messy job, but it’s worth it.

The coffee shop has new owners now. It no longer becomes my cooking school in the evenings. I still enjoy the friendships that started over a mixing bowl or a chopping board.

In the same fashion many recipes are passed from one cook or baker to another, I pass Snickerdoodle Muffins on to you from Steve and DeeJay. (I still find it hard to believe there is not a bit of cottage cheese in the list of ingredients for these heavenly muffins!)

 Steve’s Snickerdoodle Muffins

  • 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1/4 cup buttermilk (or whole milk)

Topping:

  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 2 tablespoons cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare muffin tins with paper liners. Cooking spray doesn’t work.

Prepare Topping by combining 2/3 cup sugar and cinnamon in a large cereal bowl. Set aside.

With electric mixer, beat butter until creamy. Add sugar and beat until mixture is fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and beat into the butter mixture.

Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt together. Add half of the sifted dry ingredients to the butter mixture in mixing bowl and beat at low speed just until combined. Add sour cream and buttermilk and beat at low speed to blend. Add remainder of dry ingredients and beat at low speed just until all dry ingredients have been incorporated into the mixture.

Using a cookie dough scoop (I used my Pampered Chef ice cream dipper), plop a scoop of batter into the bowl of cinnamon and sugar and roll until coated. Put the coated batter ball into a muffin liner. Sprinkle leftover cinnamon-sugar evenly over all of the unbaked muffins.

Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, until muffins spring back when lightly touched with a finger on the top. Makes about 18 muffins.

 

Weekend Baking: Muffins with a sweet summer surprise inside

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Last week I had a cooking class in my kitchen for an 8-year-old birthday girl and her good friend. The birthday girl has a grandma who appreciates the fact that her granddaughter loves to cook and bake and she wants to nurture that interest. So, grandma arranged for me to give a cooking and baking lesson to her young and very kitchen-savvy granddaughter.

I knew the moment the girls walked in with their own aprons that they meant business. My assumption was reinforced when I began showing the girls to crack eggs on the work surface rather than the edge of the mixing bowl to prevent little pieces of shell from sliding into the bowl and to drop the insides into a little custard cup before adding it to the mixing bowl and I heard, “Yup, I saw that on a cooking show.” Yes, these girls knew their way around the kitchen.

We snipped fresh herbs from the garden to add to a salad, made pizza with whole wheat pasta, mixed up granola for them to take home and squeezed lemons to stir into a cool beverage (yes, they knew lemons at room temperature rolled around on the counter give more juice). For dessert, the young bakers made banana muffins with a strawberry hidden inside.

Very ripe bananas got mashed with a fork and stirred into a buttery batter. Then, the batter got scooped into paper-lined muffin tins.

Before the muffin tins were ready to slide into the oven, the girls rolled clean, whole strawberries in sugar. A sugar-coated strawberry got pushed into the top of each muffin before baking. That’s the sweet,  juicy summer surprise inside.

The cooks in my kitchen that day made a delicious, healthful lunch that they shared with the birthday girl’s grandma and mom and lucky me.

I just made another batch of these moist muffins. I used garden-fresh strawberries that I bought at the Lakes Area Farmers Market in Detroit Lakes. My favorite guy ate a couple warm out of the oven for a snack last night. He grabbed a couple on his way out the door this morning to eat on the way to work.  Sprinkled with a little powdered sugar and served with a tiny scoop of vanilla ice cream (homemade is great!), these muffins become cupcakes for dessert.

These muffins are a nice way to use a handful of the strawberries that are ready to pick at local berry farms. Tomorrow (Saturday), I’ll be turning some fresh strawberries into Strawberry-Almond Cheesecake Bites when I do a cooking demonstration at the farmers market in Detroit Lakes. I’ll be cooking there from 11:00 to 1:00, using fresh produce, beef, bread and edible flowers from the farmers/vendors who will be selling there on Saturday. If you are in the area, please stop by. I’d love to see you at the Lakes Area Farmers Market.

Sweet Surprise Summer Muffins

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/4 cups sugar
  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
  • 2 ripe bananas, mashed
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • Whole, fresh medium-sized strawberries
  • 2 to 3 tablespoons sugar for the strawberries

 

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
  2. Put muffin papers into the baking pan.
  3. Sift flour with baking powder, baking soda and salt and set aside.
  4. In a large mixing bowl, use an electric hand mixer to beat sugar and butter together until creamy.
  5. Add mashed bananas and beat.
  6. Break eggs into a medium-sized bowl. Beat slightly with a whisk. Add buttermilk and lemon juice. Whisk about 20 times.
  7. Pour the buttermilk mixture into the bowl with the butter and sugar. Beat at low speed with the mixer to blend.
  8. Add sifted dry ingredients all at once to the bowl.
  9. Gently stir with a wooden spoon until the flour disappears.
  10. Use ¼ cup measure with a handle to scoop batter into muffin papers, filling almost to the top.
  11. Roll each strawberry, one per muffin, in the 2 tablespoons sugar.
  12. Using your fingers, push a sugar-coated strawberry into the top of each muffin
  13. Bake muffins in preheated 400-degree oven 15 to 20 minutes.
  14. Transfer muffins to a wire rack to cool.
  15. Makes about 1 1/2 to 2 dozen muffins, depending on size.

Moist and Marvelous Rhubarb Blueberry Nut Muffins

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This time of year I can’t get enough rhubarb. Between the fresh perennial herbs I’m snipping out of my flower garden and the lovely stalks of rhubarb coming my way from friends, I’m enjoying lots of playtime in my kitchen.

I’ve often adapted my favorite blueberry muffin recipe, using it as a base for a swirl of rhubarb and fresh strawberries. But, it’s not strawberry season around here. Yet. With lots of blueberries stashed in my freezer, I decided to partner them with some finely chopped rhubarb and bake up some muffins.

I baked these muffins on Friday night and savored each warm bite of sweet blueberries and tart rhubarb in a taste-test before going to bed. They sat on the counter overnight to cool. One went down on my way to the farmers market yesterday morning where I did a cooking demonstration. The remaining muffins rested on the cooling rack on the counter. From the farmers market I was off to an asparagus-pickling party. Finally, when I returned home around 5:00, the lovely muffins went into a container. I was hoping they hadn’t dried out.

I just ate another one with my first cup of coffee of the morning. Even after being treated with neglect, they are still moist. With a brief warm-up in the microwave, they were as good as just-baked.

Next time I’ll just use all rhubarb and leave out the frozen blueberries. Those berries gave the batter a slight tint of purple.

I’ve packed up the remaining muffins to take back to the asparagus pickling party that is continuing this morning. Who knew it would take so long to pickle 60 pounds of asparagus? Good grief.

Enjoy the muffins. If you love rhubarb desserts, you must check out the recipe for Rosemary-and-Honey Infused Rhubarb Dream that I have in my column this week.

Rhubarb-Blueberry-Nut Muffins

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup buttermilk
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups finely chopped rhubarb
  • 1 cup blueberries, frozen or fresh
  • 1/2 cup chopped nuts
  • Extra sugar for sprinkling over muffins

With a spoon, mix butter and sugars in a mixing bowl. Add eggs, vanilla and buttermilk and stir to blend. Sift flour, salt and baking powder together. Add all at once to mixture in bowl. Stir just until almost completely incorporated. Add rhubarb, blueberries and nuts. Gently stir to mix in. Fill paper-lined muffin tins almost to the top with batter. Sprinkle each muffin with 1 teaspoon of sugar. Bake in preheated 375-degree oven for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on size of muffins. Makes about 14 to 16 traditional-sized muffins.

 

These muffins are the last of the zucchini for this year — promise!

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I just couldn’t allow a zucchini season to come and go without at least one batch of our family-favorite muffins.

I began making these muffins when my older son was a tot. He’d gobble up the tiny two-bite-size miniature muffins that I made for him. I’ve been making them every year since. Now my grandchildren enjoy the muffins. But, I never had a chance to make the zucchini muffins this year at times when I would see them.

So, with some grated zucchini I had in the refrigerator, I made the sweet cinnamon-flavored muffins for the folks who work at the veterinary clinic that Gracie goes to for her care. She turned 16 weeks old on Friday and was scheduled for an appointment to finish up her puppy shots.

Here’s Gracie:

She loves visiting her friends at the clinic. And they lover her. After all, not every dog can bake.

This is the end of my zucchini recipes until next season. I promise!

Zucchini Muffins

  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 2/3 cup canola oil
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups shredded zucchini
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease 18 muffin cups and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, beat eggs. Whisk in oil, vanilla and sugar. Stir in zucchini. Measure flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon into a sifter and sift the dry ingredients into the zucchini mixture in bowl. Stir just until combined.

Fill prepared muffin tins 3/4 to the top. Bake 15 to 20 minutes until tops of muffins spring back when pressed lightly with your finger. Top of muffins should not look moist. Remove from oven. Run a table knife around each muffin. Allow to cool 5 to 10 minutes in the pan before removing and transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Makes about 1 1/2 dozen muffins.

Tips from the cook

  • These muffins freeze very well. Seal tightly in plastic freezer bag or freezer container before putting in the freezer.
  • Batter can be refrigerated overnight and baked in the morning.
  • Most times, I peel the zucchini that will be used for these muffins. It guarantees there will be no green specks in the muffins, giving good indication that zucchini is one of the main ingredients. This time, though, the zucchini in my refrigerator had actually been grated when I was planning to make a baked dish. I never got around to it. You can see the green specks in the muffins.

Fresh cherries brighten bran muffins

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I’m going to be spending a few days with my butter-loving, almost-two-year-old granddaughter who most appreciates a bit of butter on a muffin. I usually bake up a batch of Bran Date Muffins for her — one of her favorites. This time I decided to try something new.

In May, my book club read "This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader," by Joan Dye Gussow. The book is a toss up of part gardening book, part novel and part memoir that gives the reader an easy and casual education about organic gardening and sustainable living. Everyone in my group enjoyed the book tremendously.

Gussow scatters several recipes throughout the book. Cherry Bran Wheat Germ Muffins are adapted from her recipe for blueberry muffins.

These muffins are moist and flavorful. My granddaugther will vote in on them in the morning when she tastes them for the first time.

I ate one still warm from the oven. Without butter. Delicious.

Cherry Bran Wheat Germ Muffins

  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup walnut oil or canola oil
  • 2 cups buttermillk
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
  • 1/2 cup wheat germ
  • 1 1/2 cups oat bran
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 cups quartered fresh pitted cherries

With a whisk, beat 3 eggs in a large mixing bowl until light. Add brown sugar and blend well. Add oil, buttermilk, vanilla and almond extract. Whisk to blend well. Use a wooden spoon to mix in wheat germ and oat bran. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into the mixing bowl. Stir until mixed. Gently stir in the cherries.

Spoon batter into greased muffin cups. Bake in preheated 400 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Allow to cool in pan for about 5 minutes. Transfer muffins to cooling rack. Makes 24 muffins.

These muffins freeze well.

Teeny Peachy-chini Muffins

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This time of year, zucchini is everywhere. It’s coming out of our ears. And, it’s this time of year when I make dozens of tiny (and big) zucchini muffins. They are the same muffins I’ve been making for years. When my sons were just little guys, they loved picking up the sweet mini-muffins — just the right size for their little hands. As they got older, the muffins got bigger.

I made another batch this morning. It didn’t take long, because I had the dry ingredients already measured out, ready to be poured out of a zip-top storage bag. I usually have a few bags of the premeasured dry ingredient mix in my pantry this time of year. It doesn’t take me long  to peel and grate zucchini. My food processor makes fast work of the grating. I grate more than I need, measure out 1-1/2-cup-portions and refrigerate or freeze them for the next batch of muffins.

This morning I made more muffins, but with a peachy twist. I peeled a couple of peaches and tucked a thick slice into each of the large muffins just before popping them into the oven. In the mini-muffins, I pushed a peach chunk into the middle of each. I sprinkled a full teaspoon of turbinado sugar over each large muffin before baking. Together with a little peach juice that oozed out while baking, each muffin had a crinkly, crunchy top.

Besides the fact that each bite of Peachy-chini Muffin is moist, sweet and delicious, I love the fact that the batter can be refrigerated for up to a week. Warm, fragrant muffins can be baked at anytime. And, the baked muffins can be wrapped up tight and stored in the freezer. They’re great warmed up and eaten with a big mug of hot cocoa on a cold winter morning.

I’ve saved a little batter this time. I’ll bake them when my assistant is here to help me get ready for my demonstration at the Women’s Expo in Bemidji this Saturday. They’ll be just right for a coffee break.

If you are in the Bemidji area, come see me on Saturday morning at the Expo. I’ll be giving a cooking demonstration at 11:00, sharing some of my favorite recipes for unique healthful and "skinny" fun-to-eat dips, dippers and finger foods that will take you from these last hot days of summer all the way through the "fat" holiday celebration season.

Looking ahead:

I’ll be presenting another cooking program in Dickinson, North Dakota at the Women’s Expo on Saturday, September 12th at 10:00.

Saturday, October 10th you can come see me at the Women’s Expo in Willmar, Minn.

Thursday, November 5th I’ll be teaching a cooking class in Moorhead, Minn. titled, "The Start of Something Big — Holiday Appetizers." Registration begins August 28th through Moorhead Community Ed. Details will also be available at their web site beginning August 28th: https://communityed.moorhead.k12.mn.us/

I’ll be looking forward to seeing many of you during the next few months.

In the meantime, enjoy these Peachy-chini Muffins.

Peachy-chini Muffins

  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 2/3 cup  canola oil
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 1 1/2 cups peeled and shredded zucchini
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 to 2 peaches, peeled and cut into thick slices (a thin-skin peeler works great for removing the skin from peaches)
  • Turbinado or sparkling sugar (1 teaspoon per muffin)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Beat eggs. Stir in oil, vanilla, sugar and zucchini.

Combine flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and soda in sifter. Sift into zucchini mixture. Mix just until blended.

Coat muffin tins with non-stick cooking spray. Fill muffun cups 2/3 full. Push a peach slice into each muffin-cup of batter. Sprinkle each muffin with 1 teaspoon of turbinado sugar.

Bake in preheated oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Size of the muffins will determine the number you will get and how long they will take to bake.

They’re my dad’s banana muffins (with a tropical twist)

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My favorite banana muffins in the whole world have always been the ones my dad called his own. I don’t remember a time that he ever made them, but still, he called the moist muffins his banana muffins.

With pride in his voice, he would tell us the same story each time we ate the muffins. He was just a young boy when he invented the recipe in his mom’s kitchen. He mixed them up and baked them himself. Apparently, though, when he got married, he passed the banana muffin-making over to his wife. And so, for years, my mom made my dad’s banana muffins. My brother and I, along with my dad, would eat the muffins up in no time. They were delicious.

I’m not so sure my dad would approve of me playing around with his recipe. I’m in the midst of mango madness. I couldn’t stop myself from stirring some chunks of fresh mango into my dad’s banana muffins. Since I had half a can of cream of coconut in my refrigerator, leftover from the coconut cream custard I made for the mango soup (see previous post), I decided to stir some of that into the batter, too.

The new version of my dad’s banana muffins took on a tropical flair. They are still moist and full of great flavor. I’ve discovered the blacker the bananas look, the more pronounced the banana flavor will be in the baked muffins. When the last of a bunch of bananas starts to look too dark to eat, I put them in a zip-top freezer bag and pop them into the freezer. When I’m ready to start making muffins, I take them out of the freezer and let them thaw a little bit. I cut off the top end of each banana and squeeze the mushy banana right into the mixing bowl. Easy.

Next time I make the muffins with cream of coconut, I will stir in some chopped macadamia nuts and maybe some shredded coconut.

If you don’t have cream of coconut on hand, you can leave it out and increase the sugar from 1/2 cup to 1 cup.

Be sure the mango you use is ripe, juicy and sweet.

And remember — they’re my dad’s banana muffins (with a tropical twist). I’m pretty sure he’d like them.

P.S. Be sure to check out the Mango and Shrimp Quesadillas in my column this week. They would be perfect to serve at a Cinco de Mayo party.

My Dad’s Banana Muffins (with a tropical twist) or

Coconut Cream Banana Mango Muffins

  • 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), room temperature
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup cream of coconut (such as Coco Casa)
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 large ripe bananas, mashed
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1/4 teaspoon fresh lime juice
  • 1 cup vanilla yogurt or sour cream
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 ripe mango, chopped (1 cup)
  • Turbinado sugar or sparkling sugar for sprinkling on muffin tops

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Coat muffin tins with non-stick cooking spray.

In small bowl, combine yogurt or sour cream and baking soda. Mix well and set aside.

In mixing bowl, cream butter until smooth. Add sugar and beat until incorporated. Add cream of coconut and blend. Add eggs, mashed bananas, vanilla, lime juice, and yogurt and baking soda. Mix well. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together.  Stir just until all the dry ingredients have disappeared into the batter. Stir in mangoes.

Spoon batter into prepared muffin tins to 3/4 full. Sprinkle the top of each muffin with some turbinado sugar or sparkling sugar. Bake in preheated 400-degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from muffin tins and cool on wire rack.

These muffins freeze well.

A puff of citrus with a dunk and a dip … or full immersion?

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My mom’s friend, Judy, used to make the most delicious little muffins that she called French Puffs. The miniature muffins were buttery and sweet. While they were still hot from the oven, she would immerse each little puff ball into melted butter and then roll it in cinnamon sugar.

When I started to make Judy’s recipe, I’d often start eating them as soon as they were dipped and rolled. The butter would drip down my chin and each bite would bring a little crunch of cinnamon and sugar. I have always loved serving these little French Puffs with brunch.

This time of year I get into such a lemon frenzy. I can’t get enough of the bright citrus flavor. Remember the Citrus Cream I used to fill the Tropical Twist Cream Cake in last week’s food column? The base of that Cream was actually a citrus curd, combining the juice and zest of lemons and limes.

I made another batch of the curd because I wanted to try using it in the French Puff muffins that I already love. Could they get any better?

The final results are tender and buttery  with just a hint of citrus. I divided the batter in half and stirred some poppy seeds into one portion. Rather than totally immersing each muffin in melted butter, I dipped only the tops into the yellow richness and then into granulated sugar for a little crunch and a little sparkle.

I have enough citrus curd left to make one more batch of muffins. I think I’ll chop up some toasted walnuts and stir them into the batter. And this time, I’ve decided on full butter immersion and a complete roll in the sugar. You just can’t beat that element of these baby muffin puffs.

As I mentioned in this week’s column, these muffins are a nice complement to the Ham and Eggs Couscous Salad – a delicious combination for a Spring luncheon with friends. But maybe just a dunk and a dip rather than the full immersion route.

Citrus Puff Muffins

  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1/2 cup sour cream or plain yogurt
  • 1/2 cup Citrus Curd (see recipe below)
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon poppy seeds
  • 4 tablespoons butter, melted
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Coat mini-muffin pans with non-stick cooking spray or shortening.

Beat 1/2 cup butter in a mixing bowl until smooth. Add 3/4 cup sugar and beat to incorporate. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until well blended and light. Beat in sour cream or yogurt and Citrus Curd. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together. Add all at once to mixture in bowl. Stir just until dry ingredients have been mixed in.

Divide batter in half. Add poppy seeds to one half of the batter.

Spoon a heaping tablespoon of batter into each prepared muffin cup or making each cup 3/4 full. Bake in preheated 400-degree oven for about 10 minutes or until the center springs back when lightly touched.

While muffins are baking, melt 4 tablespoons butter in a small glass custard cup. Scoop 1/4 cup sugar in another small shallow bowl. Dip each hot muffin in butter, then in sugar. Set on wire rack to cool completely. Depending on the size of your muffin tins, you will get 2 1/2 to 3 dozen Citrus Puff Muffins.

Citrus Curd

  • 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • Grated zest of 1 lime
  • Grated zest of 1 orange
  • ¼ cup freshly squeezed lime juice
  • ¼ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
  • ½ cup sugar
  • 3 large eggs

Cut butter into pieces and place in a heavy saucepot. Add lime and orange zest, juices and sugar. Place pot over moderate heat. Stir until butter melts and mixture just begins to simmer. Remove from heat. In a bowl, whisk eggs together until light and frothy. Gradually add hot liquid, whisking constantly. When mixture is well blended, pour back into saucepot. Whisk constantly over moderate heat until the mixture thickens and just begins to bubble. Pour citrus curd through a fine mesh sieve into a bowl. Cool slightly. Place waxed paper directly on top of the curd. Chill thoroughly. Citrus Curd can be stored in a jar or tightly sealed bowl in the refrigerator for a few days. Makes about 1 cup.

  • Remember that homemade curd is a wonderful topping for a slice of fresh pound cake or angel food cake. It’s also good as a filling in a tartlet shell with fresh berries sprinkled over the top.