Apple Bran Muffins

I'm not going to rant about the weather.  I'm not going to rant about the weather. I'm not going to rant about the weather...too much.  It's cold cold cold in New York right now, the kind of cold that hits you hard and burns your face and freezes your legs in the time it takes to walk from your front door to your car. It's rough. It's brutal.  It's actually....not that bad?  I bought a heavy parka (heavier than anyone in NYC needs, anyway) at the tail end of last winter and only got to use it a few times before the weather warmed up.  When I saw how low the temperatures were going to get this week, I displayed the typical outward reaction of "UGH, NO," but secretly, I was very excited about getting the chance to wear my parka all week long.  It's the puffiest, least-fashionable piece of clothing I own, but also the warmest.  It's the only thing getting me through this week's bitter cold, but as crazy as it sounds, I actually like the cold (a little).  I mean, you can't feel cozy unless it's cold outside, right?  

Baking is one of my favorite things to do when it gets cold outside.  It can easily take all day (if I'm feeling ambitious), and warms up the house at the same time. Cozying up to something that's been freshly baked and has perfumed the entire house is my idea of a morning, afternoon, and day well spent.  Last weekend, my baked good of choice to cozy on up inside was a bran muffin.  I absolutely love bran muffins. Don't know why, but they've always been one of my favorites, even as a little kid.  Now I love them for their wholesome quality, depth of flavor, and wonderful texture.  I like them when they're not too sweet and have just a hint of fruit.  These apple bran muffins are my perfect bran muffins.

Maple Glazed Pumpkin Muffins

Baking fails.  Everyone has them, no matter how long you've been baking. They're inevitable, and while they can be frustrating at times, they're not always a bad thing.  They're an opportunity for learning, for thinking up improvements, and if you're lucky, for snacking on the leftovers.  Tasty baking fails are the best kind of baking fail to have, and that's exactly what happened with these muffins. These muffins are the perfect example of that type of perfect situation. 

A few weekends ago, it was pretty rainy and gross out and all I wanted to do was lie low and watch movies in bed.  I think I wrote about this back in this post for Salted Caramel and Pecan Blondies.  It was the same weekend.  I knew I was behind on my baking and I just had to make something, even though all I wanted to do was hang out in my fuzziest sweatpants with a bowl of popcorn and a movie.  I made the blondies because I knew they would work and I knew they were quick.  Since I was already up, I figured that I might as well make something else, and I thought a quick bread of some kind would work.  Quick breads are easy and comforting, so I thought I was in excellent shape.  I had my second recipe sort of figured out, so after a little more thinking, a pumpkin bread seemed like the best option.  I already had all the ingredients I needed and baked goods don't get more seasonal than pumpkin loaves, so I was ready to go.  I mixed up the bread, baked it, let it cool slightly, and when I went to take it out of the loaf pan, it just would not budge.  It was completely stuck (you may have seen this documented on Instagram). 

Gluten-Free Blueberry Muffins

I finally did it! I finally took the plunge and made something that's traditionally made with wheat flour and made a gluten-free version.  The idea of gluten-free baking always intimidated me, mostly because all the recipes I had ever seen involved a million different flours and xantham gum and other stabilizers and I don't know what else. Arrowroot powder sounded like such a foreign thing and it just weirded me out.  I'd been meaning to make gluten free desserts for a long time, in an attempt to cater to more people, but honestly, I was just too nervous about it to give it a real chance.  It seems silly now, because it's still baking and following a set of instructions, just with a different group of ingredients.  It wasn't until the need for gluten free treats hit close to home that I realized I needed to gather my courage, do my research, and do what I do best: bake.

My mom has been on a gluten free diet for just about a month now, and I still can't believe it at times.  I mean, she's the one who taught me how to bake!  It's ironic, to say the least.  In any case though, it's amazing what this new diet has done for her.  She was feeling better within days, and she'll never look back.  Since starting her new diet, my mom has been experimenting with different gluten free baked goods from the store, and while we have found some that are pretty good, we've definitely been disappointed with a lot of them.  Some of the things we've tried were way too sweet or tough, and don't even get me started on the loaves of sliced bread...now those are frightening.  Recently, she bought a couple of gluten free blueberry muffins and was not happy with them at all.  I promised my mom that blueberry muffins would be the first gluten free treat I would make. 

Blackberry Crumb Muffins

I've always considered muffins my ideal baked good.  I'm not a fan of things that are overly sweet, and while I love cake, I don't have the best relationship with frostings and glazes (aka, I could almost always do without them). Muffins are the solution to my baked good dilemma.  They don't need to be cloyingly sweet (although unfortunately, they often are), and they don't require frosting or glaze to be considered finished.  I love all kinds of muffins, from healthy bran muffins to less healthy chocolate chip muffins because I get the opportunity to eat cake in the mornings and call it breakfast, and few things are better than that. 

While every now and again I'll get a weird, inexplicable craving for an unnecessarily sweet muffin, like a double chocolate chocolate chip muffin, my favorite go-to muffin is the simple kind that comes loaded with fruit and is topped off with a sweet crumble.  I may not like frostings and glazes, but I could never pass up on a crumble or streusel topping.  I mean, could you?  Probably not.  Crumb-topped muffins are the perfect balance between sweet cakes and acceptable breakfast treats.  The presence of a crumb topping means that you can have a barely sweetened muffin base to go along with the sweet, buttery, crumbly mess on top. 

Banana Nut Muffins

These Banana Nut Muffins have been on my baking schedule for a long, long, long time.  Not this exact recipe, necessarily, but the idea of making and posting a banana nut muffin recipe has been on my mind for the past month and a half at least.  If I had had my way, I would have made and posted a batch of banana muffins a month and a half ago, but I couldn't.  I had to hold out.  These muffins were a direct request from my sister, and she demanded that I make them for her.  It's funny, because she was home for her spring break in March and her banana nut muffin craving kicked in maybe the day after she left, meaning that she (and I) had to wait until this past weekend when she came home for a random trip home to enjoy these muffins.   She mentioned these banana muffins that I promised to make for her at least three times daily since the idea landed in her head, and by the time she got home on Friday night, her texts had gone from, "I'm so excited for these banana muffins" to, "OMGAHHH BANANANANAANA MUFFFINNSS AAAHHH!!!!!!"

This was clearly a very serious craving.   

As much as I teased her for becoming so obsessed with banana nut muffins, I was secretly counting down the days I until I could make them.  I've always loved banana-flavored things, and muffins are just about one of my absolute favorite baked treats to eat.  Anything that's sweet, cakey, and without frosting is my kind of baked good, and along with simple cakes, muffins are at the top of my list. When my sister mentioned that she wanted me to make her banana nut muffins, I immediately realized that I really couldn't remember the last time I had had a banana nut muffin, and I found this upsetting.  I think I was just excited about making these banana nut muffins as she was, except that I obviously made sure to play it cool and kept my excessive excitement to myself.

Loaded Carrot Muffins

With Easter only a few short days away, I figured that it was high time to finally cave in to that carrot cake craving that has been pestering me for the longest time.  I am a huge, huge, huge fan of the stuff.  I've always loved carrot cake, and I remember that one of my dad's coworkers would always send us carrot cake as a treat.  He and my dad were good friends, and they used to work near this little diner in Long Island City that apparently had good carrot cake.  I'll be honest, I don't really remember how good this particular carrot cake actually was, but I do remember that I always loved eating it.  It must have been good, I guess! 

For me, the problem with most carrot cakes is really simple, and really obvious.  They're just too darn oily and greasy.  I feel like it's a really common and unfortunate problem and for me, it just kills my carrot cake craving. Some people don't mind a dense, slightly greasy carrot cake, but I'm just not one of them.  Greasy cake?  No thank you, that just doesn't sound good.  I also happen to like my carrot cake on the plain side.  I like a moist, fully loaded carrot cake with a sprinkling of powdered sugar on top, or maybe, at the very most, a thin slather of cream cheese frosting.  I love the flavor of a good carrot cake so much that I don't even want cream cheese frosting to taint it.  

Snickerdoodle Cheesecake Muffins

It's been a really, really long time since I've made muffins to share with you guys on the blog.  I have no idea why, since muffins are really an excuse to eat cake for breakfast, and I love anything that lets me eat cake at all times of the day.  My main issue with muffins is that I find them hard to photograph for some reason.  I know, that's not really the most legitimate reason to avoid making delicious muffins and getting the opportunity to eat cake for breakfast, but I'm pretty sure that deep down, that's the real truth.  Give me a dozen muffins and I'm just not really sure what to do with them.  Granted, I still feel like I'm still pretty much winging it whenever I take photographs for the blog, but muffins are something else.  I kinda sorta know what to do with brownies and other bar cookies, and I really like photographing thick slices of cake and big scoops of ice cream, and super tall stacks of pancakes. I'm typically pretty happy with the way those photographs come out, but with muffins...that's a whole other story. I'm usually putting things together and more or less crossing my fingers that my photographs will come out somewhat interesting, but more often than not, I'm usually a little indifferent about them.  They're nice, sure, but not much more.  Muffins, while delicious, just don't have the same visual appeal that a frosting swirled cupcake has, even though I'd honestly rather eat a muffin than a cupcake about 90% of the time.  Muffins have always been my nemesis when it comes to food photography subjects, but hopefully this will change one day!

The other day, I went to a small cafe around the corner from the office where I'm working right now to buy myself some lunch.  I ordered a half sandwich/half soup lunch combo, and while I was standing at the front of the cafe waiting for my order to be prepared, I saw that they had a muffin sitting on their counter.  It had already been split and was sitting out to be eaten in the form of free samples by customers, so I felt obliged to partake in the muffin sampling.  The cinnamon muffin that had been left out, while certainly not the best muffin I've ever had, was still pretty decent.  Anyway, that one bite of a just-decent cinnamon crumb muffin left me craving cinnamon muffins of my own...better muffins!  It didn't matter that I'm always apprehensive about photographing muffins.  My mind had been made up, and I knew I needed to make a batch of muffins over the weekend.  

I knew I wanted to make cinnamon muffins.  That wasn't even an issue.  I had been inspired to recreate the cinnamon muffins from the cafe and make them loads better, and cinnamon muffins are great because they only have really simple ingredients that I always have on hand in my kitchen.  These snickerdoodle muffins, as I'm calling them, incorporate cinnamon a total of three times.  They have a nice dose of cinnamon mixed into the muffin base, are studded with lots of mini cinnamon chips, and are sprinkled with cinnamon sugar on top.  I happened to have a bag of cinnamon chips on hand because my sister got them for me at the King Arthur Flour shop up at Dartmouth, and I knew this would be a perfect time to finally get around to using them.  This is really the only "specialty" ingredient in these muffins, but oh man, these little chips are such a great ingredient!  They look just like regular mini chocolate chips, but are much lighter in color.  They bake just like regular chocolate chips, so you can feel free to add them into your favorite recipes without having to worry about anything. These chips were the perfect addition to make the muffins something really special...or that's what I thought...

As I was pulling out the eggs, sour cream, and milk that I needed for the muffin base, my eyes landed on a lonely bar of cream cheese, just sitting there in my fridge.  Immediately, I thought, "OHMAHGAH, these snickerdoodle muffins NEED a cheesecake center."  Now that truly brought these muffins over the top, and what was so great about it was that the cheesecake addition didn't even add too many extra steps or over complicate the recipe. The muffins were still a breeze to mix up!  Like in most muffin recipes, you start out by sifting together all your dry ingredients in one bowl, and then mix up the wet ingredients in a separate bowl.  To make these muffins just a little more special, I decided to brown some butter to add a nutty dimension to the muffin batter.  Seriously, browned butter is one of the best tricks to keep up your sleeve when baking, because it makes everything just taste extraordinary, and these muffins are no exception.  Simply mix together the browned butter with the sugar in a bowl (all you need for this is a wooden spoon!), and then mix in the eggs, followed by the sour cream, milk, and a little vanilla extract.  Then, make a well in the bowl containing the dry ingredients, and pour in the wet ingredients.  Gently mix them together, but make sure to stop only once the ingredients have been incorporated! Lumps are totally ok when we're making muffins, so don't fret!  We just want to make sure that all the dry ingredients have been mixed in.  Gently stir in the cinnamon chips, and we have ourselves an awesome muffin batter.  The cheesecake mixture is really simple, all you need to do is beat together some cream cheese, an egg, a little flour and a little sugar in a bowl with a hand mixer until smooth.  Some layering action of muffin and cheesecake filling then takes place, and a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar finishes off the muffins.  Easy stuff!

These snickerdoodle cheesecake muffins are without a doubt the BEST muffins I've ever made.  There were just too many wonderful things about them.  They were moist and fluffy, and had a muffin top that had just the right amount of crisp in its crust.  Tiny specks of cinnamon chips dotted the interior of the muffins, and a lovely white swirl of cheesecake filling broke up the muffins in half.  This muffin recipe is so simple and perfect that it could be used as the base for any muffin flavor your heart desires.  Simply reduce the amount of ground cinnamon in the ingredients, and omit the cinnamon chips and cinnamon sugar topping.  Chocolate chips, blueberries, cranberries...all of these and more would be fantastic additions!  If you want to make these muffins even more over the top (if you really wanna go crazy), just add a cinnamon crumb topping to the muffins instead of the cinnamon sugar.  If that's not a crazy good muffin, then I don't know what is!  I'm so happy with how these muffins turned out, and I'm actually pretty happy with how these photos turned out too!  I guess this means that I'll have to start baking up more batches of muffins from now on!

Snickerdoodle Cheesecake Muffins

muffin recipe based off Ina Garten

Ingredients

For the Muffins

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon 

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 scant cups sugar

3 large eggs, at room temperature

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup sour cream

1/4 cup milk

1 cup cinnamon chips

For the Cheesecake Filling 

8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

1 large egg, at room temperature

1/3 cup sugar

1 tablespoon flour

For the Cinnamon Sugar

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and position a rack in the middle of the oven.  Line muffin tins with paper liners.  

In a large skillet set over medium heat, melt the butter.  Once melted, continue to heat and cook the butter until it turns a deep brown color and begins to smell nutty.  Once the butter has browned, remove it from the heat (including all the little brown bits) and set aside to cool slightly as you prepare the remaining ingredients.  Keep an eye on the butter, because it could go from brown to burnt in seconds!

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Set aside.  In a medium bowl, combine the brown butter and sugar, and with a wooden spoon, stir to combine.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time.  Mix in the vanilla extract, sour cream, and milk, stirring until incorporated.  

Form a well in the dry ingredients, and pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients.  With a wooden spoon, mix the ingredients together until just combined.  Don't overmix; it's ok if there's still lumps!  Gently mix in the cinnamon chips until evenly incorporated.

To prepare the cheesecake filling, beat together the cream cheese, egg, sugar, and flour in a bowl (I used a handheld electric mixer to make this easy).  Beat the mixture until smooth.

To assemble the muffins, fill the muffin cups about halfway with the muffin batter.  Add about a tablespoon of cheesecake filling, and then top off with a little more muffin batter.  It's ok if the cheesecake layer isn't fully covered by the muffin batter.  I actually made this really simple by using a cookie scoop.  I used 2 scoops of muffin batter on the bottom, followed by a tablespoon of cheesecake filling, and finished off with 1 scoop of muffin batter on top. Combine the remaining sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl, and sprinkle this cinnamon sugar over the tops of the muffins.

Bake the muffins in the preheated oven until the tops have domed and a cake tester comes out clean when inserted into the center, about 25-27 minutes.  Let the muffins cool slightly in the pans, and then transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.  Enjoy!

Makes 20 muffins 

Cranberry Chocolate Chip Crumb Muffins

November has always felt like the shortest month for me.  Time really just seems to fly once we hit November, and I can't explain why.  It's crazy to think that Thanksgiving is just two weeks away!  I always begin the month planning out an array of perfectly schemed Thanksgiving desserts, but somehow, every single year, without fail, the time just seems to disappear right before my eyes, and all of the sudden, we're just two weeks away from my favorite holiday.  Maybe this means I need to spend a little more time in the scheduling portion of my Thanksgiving scheming, rather than spending the overwhelming majority of it with my head buried in cookbooks and food magazines.  I just can't help myself, though.  I want to try so many recipes, that I am always getting a bit over my head and completely overestimate how much I can actually accomplish in the time that I have. Sadly, I've gotten used to this mild disappointment that seems to inevitably strike with the coming of every holiday season.  Sigh.  That's what I get for having so many foodie magazine subscriptions...

Today's recipe is not a Thanksgiving dessert recipe, despite the frustrations I just described about running out of time to try all the things I want to try.  While not a Thanksgiving dessert, these little cranberry chip muffins with a buttery crumb topping are something that I had put on my list of things to make a long time ago, so at least it's a sign that I was able to actually make one of the things that had caught my eye accomplished!  As for Thanksgiving desserts, don't worry.  Pies are coming.  Trust me.  I may even throw in some extra desserts. I've got the end of your Thanksgiving feast covered, so fear not!

Mini Apple Cider Doughnut Muffins

Oh hi there!  I feel like I've been lagging behind on my posting again, but life has gotten in the way, as it always does.  Nothing serious has happened, so there's no reason to be alarmed, but just lots of silly things.  Silly things like spending an awesome Saturday afternoon getting lost in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of my all time favorite places ever, only to end the day's adventure with a really, really, really disappointing meal at a Greek restaurant.  It looked promising, as the appetizers that were ordered were so delicious, but I realized when I got my entree that I've actually had better much better food off a food truck (I LOVE food trucks, by the way)...my food was just awful. Then, on Sunday I drove myself into an Italian food coma by eating way too many fried calamari and slices of grandma pizza and other appetizers, in addition to an enormous bowl of prosciutto and shrimp pasta (a bowl so enormous that it could probably have fed two and a half people.  Ok, I obviously didn't eat the whole bowl.  I was hardly able to make a dent in it).  I don't normally follow such excessive means of eating, but this was a birthday celebration, so it felt appropriate.  Following this massive meal came a much needed nap, and then the finale of Breaking Bad, my all time favorite show.  I won't discuss the episode, in order to avoid ruining it for those who haven't seen it yet (...do these people even exist?), but I will say that I am certainly going to be feeling a major void in my Sunday nights from now on.  I'm sure that once The Walking Dead comes back on, I'll feel a little bit better, but only a little bit.  Breaking Bad just cannot be replaced.  Monday was boring and nothing exciting happened.  Then Tuesday, I had jury selection.  Let's just say that it was as dreadful as I thought it would be, the trial itself could have been interesting, but I just got a major headache at the end and wanted to go home.  Fortunately, I wasn't selected and am officially exempt from further jury duty service for the next six years.  Hooray! 

The events I just described aren't major (maybe jury duty is), and I consider them to be somewhat silly excuses for not staying on top of things around here.  The truth is, I really have been a bit busy in more serious respects.  I've been trying to find a full time job (my first "real" job) in an architectural or other creative type of setting, and I'll be perfectly honest and say that it's been toughhh.  I've written more cover letters than I can keep track of, I'm checking my email constantly, and have been working on tweaks for my portfolio in whatever spare moments I have.  The process sucks, and I'm doing my best to keep positive by exercising and baking as often as possible (oh, the irony...) in order to get my mind focused on other things for short periods of time. Fortunately, the new season has arrived, and I've fully embraced the changes that come with it, especially for those changes that will get to take place in my kitchen.  There's a big jug of cider in my fridge, I've already started planning my first ever apple picking expedition, and I've started pulling out all my scarves and sweaters. I'm ready for baking tons of fall goods, despite the unusually warm weather right now (temperatures were near 80 degrees yesterday).  Regardless of the weird weather, my cravings for warm spiced flavors are only growing as the days go by. 

Mini Corn Dog Muffins

Looks like one of the biggest weekends in American culture is soon to be upon us, Super Bowl weekend!  Let's be perfectly clear that football and I just do not mix.  Forrealz.  It may be totally un-American of me, but I'm sure I'm not alone in my sentiments. I've just never taken the time to sit down and attempt to understand the rules of the game, and my memories of the football games that I have seen are both limited and unpleasant.  I've only attended football games in high school and at this past year's homecoming, and both types have been underwhelming.  In high school, our symphonic band (which was a fantastic band) was forced strongly, strongly, strongly encouraged to participate in the school's pep band.  Attendance was required at a minimum of three home games per season (or something like that), and I dreaded going to each game.  I just wasn't into it!  My disdain for this American pastime continued into college, and I have only attended a single football match, and it was at this year's homecoming (and I only stayed for about fifteen or twenty minutes of the game).  What can I say, I got bored!  

For me, I look forward to the Super Bowl for three reasons: the commercials, the half time show, and Super Bowl snacks.  Buffalo wings, chips, pretzels, all kinds of dips, and most Super Bowl food items tend to come with bacon in some form or another.  These are all good, wonderful things.  I figured I needed to supplement my favorite Super Bowl foods with a treat of my own, and these mini corn dog muffins were at the very top of my list of things to make.  

Raisin Bran Muffins

Hello again!  It's that time of year that we've all come to dread.  The holidays are over; there's no more excuses for baking endless amounts of cookies, gym membership commercials are starting to take over my television, and the effects of massive food consumption during Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and all the days in between are finally starting to take their toll.  I've been feeling rather lethargic lately, and have seriously fallen off the wagon with working out in the past three weeks: finals week, a thrown back, two back to back colds (or I guess, one really long one?), and baking marathons have left little time/ability for exercise, and it's all starting to catch up to me.  It's time for some healthy eating!

I love knowing that I'm eating healthy, and I actually don't find it to be that difficult, since I am a huge fan of fruits and vegetables and whole grains.  I'll take whole wheat or multigrain bread over white bread any day of the week, and a bowl of fresh fruit is always hard to turn down.  While I am a huge fan of fruits and vegetables and whole grains, the problem is that I'm also a huge fan of butter and flour, and all of their derivatives, whether they are in the form of cookies, cakes, bread, muffins, scones, pies...you get the picture.  I am also NOT a fan of completely cutting out anything from my diet, but prefer to instead learn how to take everything in moderation and incorporate healthy items into my everyday foods.  I mean seriously, I don't think I'll ever be able to eliminate chocolate and bread from my diet...that's just absurd, really.  Fortunately, there are ways of going around the healthy aspect!  Raisin bran muffins are one of my favorite ways of doing this. 

Orange, Cranberry & Chocolate Chip Muffins

What a crazy past couple of days it's been!  There's been good and bad, and a lot of just plain craziness. Hurricane Sandy caused much more devastation than I think anyone had been expecting.  Thankfully, my family was relatively unaffected.  Sure, they had neither power nor heat for 8 days, but when you look at the bigger picture and think about how much damage the storm caused, and how many lives it changed, it puts everything into perspective.  Eight days of no power really isn't all that bad.  I went home on Monday so I could be at home to vote on Tuesday, and I couldn't believe what I saw.  A lot of the streets had been cleaned up by my house, but even still, there were enormous heaps of garbage bags in front of almost everyone's houses, along with ruined furniture and appliances, and every now and then, you'd come across giant branches on the street that hadn't yet been cleared off.  The Trader Joe's by my house, literally a ten minute drive, was completely destroyed, with only its four outer walls remaining.  The majority of the traffic lights in my neighborhood were still not working, and the lines to get just a couple of gallons of gas went on for blocks.  I was actually at home when the power finally came back, and the reaction was incredible.  There was a brief flash of power, and my parents and I just looked at each other, and we ran to the front door.  Everyone else on my block must have done the same, because then the power came back for real, and all you could hear were people shouting, "Power! Power!  Power!!!"

More shouting filled the streets last night, but for completely different reasons.  Rather than shouts of relief, celebratory singing, cheering, and screaming could be heard all around campus.  Columbia was pretty happy with Obama's re-election!  I had been looking forward to this day for so long.  I remember I was really bummed out that I couldn't vote in the 2008 election because I was only 17, and I knew there was no way I was going to miss voting this time around!  To be honest though, I found the actual voting experience rather underwhelming. I'm not sure what I was expecting, because filling out those little bubbles on the scantron couldn't actually be that exciting, but I don't know...I may have been underwhelmed, but I still got to vote!  That was the good part of the past couple of days.  The crazy part?  This nor'easter!  We went from having a hurricane one week, to a crazy winter storm only a week later.  Mother nature, give us a break plz.  My hair can't take too many winter storms like this (seriously, not-so-pretty things start happening when there's a ton of winter precipitation...)! Hopefully this storm won't be too bad!  Given that the past couple of days have been a little hectic, I knew I needed something a little stable, something that'll always be good no matter what the circumstances are. Chocolate chip muffins are perfect for this sort of predicament. 

Pumpkin Cheesecake Muffins

Happy October, everyone!  I'm loving this fall weather and everything else related to the new season.  Hot cider and colorful leaves are some of my favorite things!  Pumpkin flavored things are starting to appear EVERYWHERE and while I'm not as big of a fan of pumpkin (shocking, I know), it's been growing on me, so I knew I had to have some pumpkin treats in store.  My sister is a huge fan of literally everything with pumpkin (actually, the only pumpkin-flavored food she hasn't liked is pumpkin Greek yogurt...I can't blame her, that sounds kinda weird to me), so last year she stocked up on canned pumpkin and pumpkin pie filling.  Seriously. This girl went on a major pumpkin shopping spree once the supermarket started selling them for 99 cents a can. I think we're gonna be good on pumpkin for a very, very, very, long time.

It's a good thing she ended up buying so much canned pumpkin; it actually came in very handy!  Pumpkin cravings were satisfied with ease throughout the year, once canned pumpkin couldn't be found as easily in stores.  My sister started making pumpkin pies (the recipe will be coming eventually!), slicing them up, and freezing the individual slices to enjoy as snacks for later.  I prefer having pumpkin in muffin-or-some-other-kind-of-bread form, so muffins were my choice when I decided to bake something with pumpkin.  I knew that to make them "extra-good," a cinnamon crumb topping would be necessary.  And cheesecake filling!?  Geez.  Too good. These muffins ended up being my favorite pumpkin treats to date.  Seriously, I never thought I'd say something like that, but it's true!

Browned Butter Blueberry Crumb Muffins

Remember way back in the day, back in the really early days of this blog when I made a Blueberry Buttermilk Cake?  It was around that time of the summer when my mom and I went a bit insane and nearly cleared out the produce section of our supermarket of blueberries, since they were at the amazing price of only 99 cents a pint.  I used some of the blueberries I bought while they were still fresh, I ate maybe about another pint entirely by myself, and I froze the rest.  There was one afternoon last summer where my freezer was literally full of trays of blueberries being flash frozen before I transferred them into large freezer-safe bags. Having these frozen blueberries on hand has been such a huge advantage; I've used them countless times since, and I still have about another two bags of blueberries left!  I made some pretty awesome blueberry muffins with them.  

Mango "Colada" Muffins

We were pretty lucky this season. At least in New York, towards the tristate area, since that is the only area of the country that I can speak of with any sort of authority and credibility.  We had quite a lovely winter.  I'm serious.  The weather was surprisingly warm (I mean, "warm"), and snowfall?  Non-existant. Maybe this global warming thing isn't so bad...okok, I'm kidding. Let's not get into the whole global warming things right now.  It's too political and to be frank, I am not the least bit interested in discussing politics at 9 am on a Friday morning...or most of the time for that matter, to be perfectly honest.  I just hate having to trudge around the Columbia campus and New York City for the most part when the ground is covered in a nasty, gray blanket of "wintery-mix"...you know, that blend of sleet and snow and rain that just ends up getting super dirty on the ground...ew.  Just ew.  HOWEVER...we didn't have any of that at all this winter! Save for that really random snowfall we got on Halloween weekend, New York City was completely devoid from winter snow.  That's my kind of winter!

Manco "Colada" muffins.  I put "colada" in quotes because there's no alcohol in these muffins, which only makes sense I think.  Booze is totally alright in cupcakes, but in muffins?  Nah, that just sounds kinda strange to me I think.  But anyway.  I actually made these muffins a couple of weeks ago, while I was still at home during winter break, obviously in denial that it was actually still "winter," and I wanted to make something that reminded me of spring or even better, of summer!  Sounds like a totally legit reason to bake up some mango "colada" muffins in the middle of January right?  There was also the fact that my mom came home one day with a giant cardboard box containing something like...ten mangos.  

"Surprise! Here you go, make something with mangos!" 

"Uhhh, sure mom, ok!"  

Miniature Pumpkin Doughnut Muffins

Every now and then, you just come across a recipe that sounds really delicious in your head, and when you make it, you find that the results are at least twenty-three times as good as you thought they would be.  Seriously.  At least twenty-three times.  And yes, this recipe for pumpkin doughnut muffins is one of those recipes.  They were so much more delicious than I thought they were going to be.  

I mean just look at all those tiny little mini muffins.  They're covered in lots of cinnamon sugar, so you know they're going to be really delicious.  Don't skimp out on the cinnamon sugar step. The muffins themselves aren't very sweet to begin with, so the cinnamon sugar is kinda important.  And it also adds to the whole doughnut factor.

Wait.  Muffins...and doughnuts?  Yes.  Muffins and Doughnuts.  All in one.  A combination that seems to good to be true, until you actually make them and eat them, and realize that they really are that good. I couldn't get over them when I made them.  They seriously tasted just like little doughnut holes, but were baked into a mini muffin shape.  Completely adorable and completely delicious.

Corn Muffins with Raspberry Preserves

Corn muffins are tricky, because they're hard to get just right.  Too often have I come across what looks like a delicious corn muffin but only ends up being a dry and heavy brick that is impossible to swallow no matter how much you try to wash it down.  Seriously.  Why would anyone want to eat a dry corn muffin?

Because on the off-chance that you actually find a corn muffin that isn't dry…you know you're in for a really good muffin.  Seriously.  Corn muffins are pretty darn good.

Lemon-Poppy Yogurt Muffins

I felt pretty lazy on Sunday morning.  Yeah, I said it.  I mean, I’m not going to lie to you and say that I’m always in the mood to make something elaborate or something that requires me to go to the supermarket to buy something especially for one recipe.  Chill. Those kinds of days require special moods, and on Sunday I just wasn’t feeling it.  I wanted something that was easy to make, something that I already had all the ingredients for in my kitchen, and something quick, with little clean up at the end.  Muffins seemed good.

But what kind of muffins…that was the tricky part. I wanted something with berries, since it was summer, but a problem presented itself right there. I had no berries, fresh or frozen, and the goal was not to leave my kitchen.  I returned to pondering my muffin strategy when I spotted a lemon just casually laying on my kitchen counter.  Hmmm…lemons are good…and this automatically made me think of poppy seeds, because: lemons = poppy seeds, and lemons + poppy seeds= lemon poppy seed muffins.  I also saw a large container of plain Greek yogurt in my refrigerator…this turned the equation into: lemons+ poppy seeds + Greek yogurt = lemon-poppy yogurt muffins, a winning combination!

Strawberry Muffins

I feel like muffins are sometimes misunderstood, and are mistaken as mere breakfast items or as something that at one point had the aspiration to be a cupcake, but then failed along the way.


This is preposterous.


Muffins are anything but humble, and anything but boring.  I mean, think about it...muffins make our desires to eat cake and dessert for breakfast possible!  They make our dessert-for-breakfast desires acceptable to society, because let's face it, having an apple strudel or chocolate chip cookie for breakfast is frowned upon...but in MUFFIN FORM...they become totally legitimate breakfast options.