muffinsanity

I continue to make lots of varieties of muffins and I am to the point now where I am not sure that I even like muffins.  I haven't really made a batch yet that I thought, "oh my gosh, this recipe is a keeper."  they have all been, "so yeah, these are fine."

some of my muffin crazy town:

banana muffins.

7600 reviews on Allrecipes and a five star average.  so boring that people had to ask me what flavor they were, including one who asked if they were muffin flavored.

oatmeal muffins with dried fruit:

probably the best of my scratch-made muffins so far, but not all that exciting and I have come to expect more from King Arthur recipes.

raspberry blueberry streusel muffins:

from a modified Lehi Mills box mix.  among the better outcomes of muffin-palooza.

oh, I take it back. these are my best scratch-made muffins for sure.

after selecting all these well-reviewed recipes online with limited success, I gambled on this one with only five reviews and four out of five stars because I wanted to use up some strawberries I bought.  strawberry banana muffins via Pillsbury's site - reminds me of my grandma's blueberry banana bread and my favorites so far in muffins.  probably would be even better with blueberries.

oh, yes, there is still more.  (one of my students said that he has been packing a lighter lunch because I keep bringing in so many snacks to the office...)

orange almond poppyseed muffins.

from a box mix, but tweaked out with orange rind, orange juice in the mix, and a marmalade glaze.  the almond is powerful enough to make the orange a subtle piece still.  they were fine.

why did I dump marmalade on top of a muffin?  because I bought a $6 bag of clementines that were too sour to eat and was mad that I wasted the money on them, and rather than pitching them, threw three dollars more of Sure-Jell plus several hours of peeling clementines and slicing out the fruit from the segments in order to make an orange marmalade freezer jam out of them.  I struggled with getting the right ratio of rind in there - it was too scant on first go, but adding more rind gave it some bitter notes I did not care for.  thankfully I have some coworkers who like it so it will find a good home.


oh, I made some cupcakes for a Super Bowl party too.   the hosts are gluten-free so I attempted my first intentionally gluten-free baking.

I just used a box mix but then adding some cream filling.  the family recipe for cream filling has flour, so I just used a shortening-based buttercream as the filling instead.  I also made a dozen using a regular glutenous cupcake mix, as shown below.


The gluten free mix seemed like a meatless hotdog - fine if that's what you have to do, but not even close to the real thing in terms of flavor.

I did a little sewing today, but nothing finished yet.  I have this happy stack of fabric waiting for me for my next project though.