Magic Muffins

In Need of Some Magic

It’s a dreary November day

Kitties are being lazy

And it’s still the early morning, but already I just want to crawl back into bed,

Thus, we are in need of some magic to put a little pip in our step!

It’s time for magic muffins, woot!

These are so simple and super duper fast to make,

If you find yourself needing a boost,

Make them!

Your family deserves a warm, magical breakfast, don’t you think?

Here we gooooooo!

Mix all this together

You don’t even need to worry about keeping the dry stuff and the wet stuff separate,

Just throw it all into a bowl and mix-mix-mix like you’ve never mixed before!

(I’m using a lot of exclamation points today, hmmm)

1 1/4 cups. Whole wheat pastry flour

3/4 cups Malt-O Meal, dry (the original, unflavored stuff)

1/2 cup sugar

3/4 cup milk alternative

1/4 vegetable oil

1 tbs. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

Divvy out into your muffin cups,

Then on top sprinkle a mixture of

Cinnamon (about 2 tbs.)

Sugar (4 tbs.)

Ground cloves (about 1 tbs.)

Yum!

Since there’s nothing dangerously raw in them… it wouldn’t be improper to eat them right now… right?

Haha, just joshin’

Anywho,

Put in an oven at 400 degrees and bake for 18-20 minutes, until the middle is firm to the touch

Now it's time to watch cheesy movies while eating muffins :)

Toodles 

Don't Eat These Muffins if You have a Scheduled Drug Test

Spotty Muffins

I love muffins,

Can you tell yet?

I also love Costco…

Yes, there is a point to me telling you that.

You see, Costco has a bakery, and it is amazing,

And they have COLLOSAL muffins that are sooo good

And my favorite, are their almond/poppy seed muffins.

I dislike lemon poppy seed muffins

But I adore those almond ones,

So, here we are!

These muffins are a pretty dang good comparison of the ones at Costco,

They’re unbelievably moist and taste surprisingly buttery (without the butter, duh)

The only thing you might have a hard time finding is the vegan sour cream (though I’ve found some at my local Kroger, and then of course health food stores like Sprouts.)

Anywho,

First, mix your dry ingredients

2 1/3 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

And set aside.

Then, cream together these

1/2  cup Earth Balance

1/4  cup vegetable oil

1  1/4  sugar

After its nice and creamy looking, add these

2 tbs. ground flax seeds whisked with 6 tbs. of water

(whisk in separate bowl then add to mixer)

1  1/2 cup sour cream (I used a whole 12 oz. package of Tofutti Sour Supreme)

3 tsp almond extract

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Blend really really well, then add

2 tbs. poppy seeds

And mix in well.

Then, gradually add in your dry ingredients and fold in until all blended. Do not over mix!

Mmmmmh, looks yummy already!

Then, spray or line your muffin cups,

Fill about 2/3 full

And if you’re like me,

Top with some slivered almonds

And bake in a 375 degree oven for about 20-25 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

YUM!

These are prefect to grab when running out the door in the morning :)

Happy Eating!

Muffin Mayhem! (Part 2)

Muffin Mayhem! (Chocolate Edition)

So, after I made my berry muffins, I made some chocolate muffins too…

Let me say this as a disclaimer, they were good, but not nearly chocolatey enough. You definitely need to add chocolate chips to the batter (I regrettably did not do this) and then they will be absolutely perfect!

Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s begin!

Preheat oven to 345 (no berries to let sweat here)

And stir together the following

(yes, that is a very large bag of baking soda… we love both Costco and baking soda a whole heck of a lot)

3 Cups Flour

2 Tsp. Baking Soda

1/4 Tsp. Salt

1 Cup + 2 Tbsp. packed brown sugar

1/2 cup unsweet cocoa powder

Then, in a separate bowl, stir these together

1/2 Cup Vegetable Oil

1/2 Soy vanilla yogurt (I just used a whole carton)

2 Cup Almond Milk (or your other favorite milk alternative)

2 Tsp. Red Wine Vinegar

1 Tsp. Vanilla Extract

I’ve never used vinegar in baking before, and definitely not one that is red, so I was pretty skeptical. But I do think it made the muffin moister, and didn’t taste odd at all

After all that is combined, gently fold in the dry ingredients, and in this case, you do need to make sure not to over mix! You want to look slightly fluffy and airy… these are girly muffins :)

Grease your muffins pans and fill about 1/2 way full

Then, stir these together

Aprox. 3 Tbs vegan cream cheese (that’s all I had left over from the cinnamon rolls, but I will use more next time, since this was the best part of the muffin)

2 tsp unsweet cocoa

1 tsp powdered sugar

You want it to all be combined, like this

I also drizzled a little bit of vegan chocolate sauce on my half filled muffins, but if you cant find anything like that don’t worry (though you could just melt some chips)

Then scoop the cream cheese mixture into each pan, and cover with the remaining batter

Now you want to top with choco-choco-chips!

I have been conditioned all my life to think that these were the only chips worthy of consumption either by themselves, or through baking, and I am ever so happy to discover that they are animal friendly :)

Put as many or as few as you’d like

And press them lovingly into the batter slightly

(remember that when you do this, you will have added about a whole bag to the batter already…. Right?)

Then pop-em in the oven for about 20-25 minutes and viola! Chocolate muffins!

Like I said, they were good, the top part was the best best best, since the cream cheese stuff rose to the top and it was ever so delicious. The rest of the muffin was moist and nice, but bland and not chocolatey enough, it definitely needed some chips mixed in…

To eat mine, I drizzled some more of my chocolate sauce over it; a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to get her fix

Muffin Mayhem! (Part 1)

Muffin Mayhem (Triple-Berry Edition)

Today is my dad’s birthday, he wanted muffins for breakfast; so earlier, I made my triple-berry muffins, and we all loved them….

Then later….

I made even more muffins

Chocolate muffins

Yumyumyumyumyum!

But let’s start with the berry muffins :)

It’s important to note that every time I bake things, I always change the recipe up the next time.

Case in point, these muffins. This my third time baking them, and they are considerably different than the ones I first experimented with.  But that’s just me perfecting my goodies!

Likewise, this time around I didn’t use any whole wheat flower, or flax seeds (I usually do) because my mom can’t eat those sort of things, and thus had until today, been unable to revel in the muffins everyone was raving about….

So, being the kind and loving (pah) daughter that I am, I used plain white flour, and cornstarch as the egg replacer instead of my beloved flax seeds. (Cornstarch is weeeeird; so weird, that I don’t like it, haha)

Anywho, let’s get started.

First things first: DO NOT PREHEAT YOUR OVEN, not yet at least. There is something much much much more important that you need to do!

Mix these together (you’ll be happy you did)

Take one cup of raspberries (heaping cup is much preferred)

And one cup of blueberries

And one cup of black berries (lol, see a patern?)

And place in a small/medium sauce pan over medium/low heat with sweetner of your choice.

I used ginger syrup which I found at World Market and it is so awesome that I am going to use it whenever I can from now on. I like it because it was ridiculously cheap (like two bucks I think) and it reminds me a lot of honey.

So take the sweetner of your choosing and eyeball about how much you want to use; don’t drown the poor things, just helping the release of their natural yummyness a bit.

Stir em around, and notice how juicy they’re becoming already… let them sit there while mixing the other stuff, and feel free to turn the heat up to medium/high in a few minutes to get it nice a bubbly. Act like you’re making jam.

Now you can preheat your oven to 385

Then, mix together the following

6 c. minus 3 tbs all purpose flour (I usually do 4 c. flour and 2 c. whole wheat)

2tsps baking soda (haha, while typing this I realized that I totally left the baking soda out this time around… woops)

4 tsps baking powder

Heavy pinch of salt (mmmmmmmh, sodium does my heart good)

And set aside

Then, whisk together the following beauties

2 c. sugar

1 c. vegetable oil

2 cap-fulls of vanilla (honestly, I just dump some in till I think there’s enough… I am so professional)

Your egg replacer (I usually use 5 tbs of ground flaxseed whisked with 6 tbs of water, but today I used about 2 ½ tbs cornstarch whisked with 3 tbs of water… like I said, it was really weird, and I don’t recommend it. Stick with flaxseeds, they’re loads healthier anyway)

2 c. vegan yogurt (any kind will do. I’ve even used coconut milk yogurt and it was yummy. Likewise, any flavor will do. I’ve vanilla but it was too plain for my preference, so now I use berry flavored)

Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and beat together

I know muffin recipes are always telling you to “be careful not to over mix the batter! The world will end if you over mix the batter even just a teeny-weensy-intsy-bintsy-little-bit!” and for every other muffin recipe, they are totally correct.

However, these muffins are some bad bad boys, and they need some sense beat into them.

So beat the heck out of them, and don’t stop, even if they start to beg.

See how thick that is?

These are some dense, manly muffins… no crumbly, air puffed girly muffins!

Now add about 2 cups of blueberries

Make sure to leave about a handful of blueberries though!

And “fold” into the batter

It was also at this point that I realized I had a ton of raspberries and blackberries left over, so I folded those in too

Just make sure to leave a handful of each

Now, grease your muffin pans

I am in love with my ginormous muffin pans!

See the difference?

Mhmm, I live in Texas, and only large, Texas-sized muffins are good enough for me!

Pour/scoop in the muffin batter and fill the cups about ¼ of the way full

Now, your berries on the stove should be oh so thick and scrumptious looking, stir a couple times more, getting all the good stuff off the bottom

And then spoon a heaping spoonful on top of each muffin

You can use up all the berry jam, since this only made me enough for my six large muffins

Then, pour more batter on top till the cups are pretty much full (mine where full)

Now, combine these

1 c. granola

1/2 c. flour

1/2 c. packed brown sugar

Pinch salt

And 6 tbs of cold earth balance

You want this to be all crumbly like a pie crust before you press it down into the pan

Now sprinkle it over your muffins, don’t be stingy

And place one of each berry on top

Bake for about 20-25 minutes (depending on what size muffin pans you use)

Make sure you let this cool in the pan for a good ten minutes before taking them out, because if you don’t this might happen to you

Don’t get me wrong, it was delicious, but definitely felt like I was eating a cobbler, not a muffin

And be patient when taking them out of the pan, these are gourmet muffins, and thus deserve your extra love and patience

If all goes well, they should come out intact and beautiful

Enjoy!

Look at that filling!

"May I have a muffin?"