zucchini Muffins

As I wandered through the grocery store the other night I had a hankering for my mom’s Zucchini muffins. I absolutely LOVE my mom’s recipe, it’s so fluffy and moist and packed with flavor! And even better, there’s zucchini in there so it has to be healthy right??? Well… upon closer review of the recipe there’s no wonder why I love this recipe.

Once I got home with my zucchinis I started pondering the recipe. It seems as though my love for these muffins may have been partially due to the sugar content. There was a fair bit of fat in there too. Geeze Ma, I’m starting to wonder if this is a zucchini cake! Sorry, I love you, please forgive me.

So I started playing with the recipe a little. I figure if I up the ingredients that bring natural sugars and flavors to the muffin, maybe we won’t miss the sugar too much?

I decided to up the zucchini to two cups packed grated (don’t worry, recipe is below), and added toasted nuts, along with increasing the amount of raisins, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

The next morning I got up bright and early and gave the newly revised recipe a whirl. I have to say, I certainly enjoyed the end product!

Were the new muffins quite as good as my mom’s recipe? Honestly, no. But that is pretty much the same as comparing eating a cupcake or a rice cake! However, I would declare the new recipe a success. The muffins were really delicious and still held their light fluffy qualities. Now, I can eat these muffins and not worry about just how much extra sugar I have consumed.

What are you waiting for? Go try them!

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Lemon Scones for Breakfast

It’s a long weekend here in the States, “President’s Day”, and I am thankful for a long weekend! The Hubsters is a work-a-holic and long weekends are always a great for us to unwind.

This morning he is waking up to freshly baked Lemon Scones! But shhhh he doesn’t know this!

This is a very simple recipe, and if you have lemons in your fridge I would be willing to bet you have everything else that you need to go make these right now!

As always the recipe is located at the bottom, skip ahead if you want, otherwise enjoy the picture show!

1) First get out your butter. You don’t want your butter to be too soft, so don’t take out the butter too far in advance. It' needs to be in a state such that it can hold it’s shape without melting into the batter.

2) Put all of your dry ingredients in a mixing bowl and using a pastry cutter or two knives, start cutting the butting into the flour.

***You don’t want your butter mashed into the flour, instead it should look like crumbs. You will see the dough come together when you add the milk. In the meantime, the chunks of butter are what will eventually create a light and fluffy scone. When the scone is put in the oven to bake, the butter melts and leaves a cavity in the dough, thus leaving air pockets for a fluffy end product! Moral of the story, you are NOT trying to mash the butter in to flour to create a batter or dough… the milk will do that.

3) Once finished cutting in the butter, add your lemon zest and gently fork that into the mixture as well.

4) You are going to fold and cut the milk mixture into the flour until just combined. Do no over mix. Remember we are trying to save our butter chunks!

5) Then pour the batter out onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and shape into a circle. 

6) For the sake of ease, make a pile of flour and dip your pie cutter into the flour before making each slice. Just trust me on this!

8) Last step, lightly brush the tops of the scone slices with an egg wash. This is an important step because the proteins in the wash help the scone develop a nice golden crust on top.

***Optional, I also shake out a little extra white sugar on top of scone after the egg wash.

Bake at 400* for 20 minutes and devour!

Yum!

Don’t hesitate to leave a message if you love scones, have a question, or a flavor suggestion!

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Christmas Pancakes

Bertie’s 12 Days of Christmas Baking: Day 3

Part of the fun of the12 days of baking, is giving you ideas of what to bake/eat in the days leading up to the big Christmas holiday. One of my favorite things to eat on a long weekend or any big occasion is a big feed of pancakes! Christmas morning is no different! So I’ve come up with a more festive take on pancakes!

These are mini pancakes! Mini pancakes are about 2 inches in diameter and can be eaten in a single bite! They are a lot of fun and look super cute on the plate.

Another way to make this traditional breakfast food a little more festive is to add a little bit of red, white, and green to the pile and say Ho Ho Ho. Here I used a handful of Wilton Christmas candy melts and chopped them up fairly fine…you don’t really need a lot of them, just enough to add some color.

Below is a recipe I like to use for homemade pancakes, but you can always use trusty ol’ Aunt Jemima if you like  :)

1 c. flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
3 tbsp. sugar
1 c. milk
1 egg
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

Combine dry ingredients. Add milk, egg and oil. Mix until smooth. When your batter (in the pan) starts to form bubbles and those bubble pop and leaves a visible hole then it’s time to flip them! Another 20-30 seconds on the other side and they are ready to serve!

And of course, once you have poured your batter into the hot pan, be sure to add some chopped up Christmas treats saving the last sprinkle for on top. Serve with your favorite maple syrup and enjoy!

See you tomorrow!

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A Blueberry Bunt Breakfast

Well I woke up this morning and had a hankering for some blueberry muffins! But since I already made Blueberry muffin’s for y’all then I figured I should go ahead and make a new blueberry creation!

So I scavenged around some recipes that I had for blueberry breads, scones, muffins, and cakes; this is what I done come up with!

Blueberry Bunt Cake with Lemon drizzle is a really nice way to start your Monday morning! But I’ll save you all of the pictures of the cracking the eggs, and sifting the flour and get right to explaining my over use of “country language” y’all! (But don’t worry, full recipe is on at the end!)

That’s right you can read the banner yourself… “Kenny Chesney ‘Goin Coastal Tour’ ”!!! My sister and I planned this concert WAY back in January and agreed that we would need this day to ourselves to take a break from the wedding planning, Ironman training, and her state championship playoffs!! Oh man was it worth it!

And that is why… right there!

Not sure how “up” you are on your country music, buuuut that right there, that’s the man! Sure the tour headliner was Kenny, but I‘m telling ya, Billy Currington… Mmmmm. That’s my boy. Sorry Boss, I know we’re getting Married and all, but unless you start belting out songs in his deep, gruff, country voice, he’s always going to hold a special place in my heart!

.

Anyways, all I’m saying is that well… maybe I’ll just leave it at that!

Back to the Blueberry Bunts… the only cooking picture that I want to call out is with the blueberries themselves. One thing with fresh blueberries that I like to do is rinse them off and then toss them in a light coating of flour. This seems to help them stick to the batter when the recipe is cooking and keeps all of the blueberries from sinking to the bottom of the pan while it’s sitting in the cooker!

Rinse, flour, then fold into your batter! Here is the recipe!

Blueberry Breakfast Bunt

2cups Flour

2tsp Baking Powder

1/2tsp Salt

2/3cups Vegetable Oil

1/2cups White Sugar

1/2cups Brown Sugar

2Lrg Eggs

h2/3cups Milk

1tsp Vanilla

1tsp Cinnamon

1/8tsp cloves (optional)

1/8 nutmeg (optional)

1 1/2cups Fresh Blueberries

***Pre-heat oven to 325***

 

1) On medium speed mix your oil, sugars, eggs, and vanilla around 2 minutes.

2) In separate bowl sift together your flour, baking powder, salt, and spices.

3) Once the sugar mixture looks light in color combine the flour and milk in 3 alternating parts.

4) Once all ingredients are well incorporated, fold in your blueberries (lightly floured). Be sure to fold the blueberries into the batter rather than stir them; you are trying to avoid bursting any of the berries!

5) Scoop batter into lightly greased pans (I liked the mini-bunt, but you could easily substitute that with a large bunt or muffin tins)

6)  These mini bunts took ~24 minutes to cook. Obviously cook time will vary with the size of you bunt pans. Bunts are done when inserted toothpick comes out clean!

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BANANA BREAD!

B - Bananas- B-A-N-A-N-A-N-A-N-AS!!!

Mmmmm. Have you ever had a baked good that when served straight from the oven really takes your day to a whole new level? You know the kind of treat that can take you from rock bottom to back on your feet? If not, today is your day. Honest to goodness this banana bread should be served at somber events like to the loosing team after a championship game, because all it takes is one warm bite to instantly forget your problems.

Have I gone too far with my description? I’ll let you be the judge of that. If I were to open my shop tomorrow, this Banana Bread would be a lifetime menu option and I am confident in saying that it would be a top seller! I enjoy this recipe so much that I had stopped baking it all together due to my inability to not eat the entire loaf before it even cooled. Well until now; since Bertie’s Bakery probably isn’t going to be a reality for many, many, many more months I simply cannot withhold this treasure from you any longer. Therefore I present to you, Bertie’s Bang-Bang Banana Bread! (No it’s not really called that, but YES the full recipe below).

 

As always, to start things off get your room temperature butter and sugar mixing and “Fluffing”. If I am confident that I actually have all the ingredients that I will need for the banana bread then I will go ahead and get the butter and sugar going before I even start organizing the rest of the mess I’m going to make in the kitchen!

 

Beat with the paddle attachment for a good 4-5 minutes. You don’t want your butter looking yellow any more, so beat until a pale ivory! Beat on medium, scraping the sides and bottom every 2 minutes or so and just let it do its thing. While your mixer is making all of that noise go ahead and get your dry ingredients, bananas, and liquid ingredients organized.

 

 

Here you have flour, baking soda, salt, and cloves. Wisk them together with a fork and set them aside.

Eggs and vanilla. Wisk them too and set aside.

B-A-N-A-N-A-S. MASH! In my situation today I had to defrost the bananas first and then mash. I am sure that if you are one of my endurance athlete followers, then you are always left with one or two bananas in the bunch that you just didn’t get to eat in time and now they are just too brown and smoochey for your liking. DO NOT THROW AWAY! I purposely let my bananas get a little brown before making this recipe; or better stated, I will not make this recipe with yellow or yellow/green bananas. The sugars haven’t developed all the way yet. So if you have a situation where your banana bunch has gotten away from you, don’t fret, just peel & freeze for when you are in the mood for banana bread!

*Note* If you are using frozen bananas do make sure you’ve brought the fruit back to room temp; you actually can mash frozen bananas… but the frozen pieces will effect your cook time!

Once you’ve organized, whisked, and mashed everything go ahead and gradually pour in your egg and vanilla mixture. Make sure to scrape down the sides and bottom and allow time for ingredients to become well incorporated.

Not Well Incorporated vs. Incorporated

Now is time to gradually add the mashed bananas. Don’t worry… the batter will take on the illusion that it has curdled but it hasn’t and it is still going to taste Grrrr-eat!

Not so pretty huh?

Moving on! Now, remove the bowl from the standing mixer and add your flour mixture. Using a spatula, fold in your flour. Don’t over do it. Remember there is still chocolate chips and nuts to be folded in as well.

 

Now is time for your chocolate chips and toasted walnuts. (ahem… yeah, remember when I said above “if I am confident that I have all of the ingredients for the recipe then I will get the butter started before organizing the rest”???… well there were no walnuts or pecans to be found in the house so I guess I shouldn’t have been so confident.) Both, however, of these are “Optional Ingredients” but I would also categorize them as “Highly Recommended!”

 

Fold some more.

Perfect.

Now prepare your baking pan. I have made this recipe in several different pans in the past, all really depending on what I wanted the bread for. I find people really like this bread as a random gift, so when I was teaching I would sometimes bake up several petite loafs and make deliveries to other staff members. Other times if it was simply for around the house or to deliver to our fun run-long run group I would just bake in the traditional loaf pan. Lately I have enjoyed my mini-bunt pans for the banana bread, and that is what I went with today!

You have a few options here; I’ll start with my preference.

Oil the pan/ Pam.

Then add sugar!

I take about 1tsp of white sugar and sprinkle it into each mini bunt. Then go ahead and tilt and swirl the pan (over the sink) such that the excess sugar rolls around the inside and coats the inside walls and bottom. Then go ahead and turn the whole facing down and gently tap out any excess sugar into the sink.

You could go ahead and do this same process with flour, or you could simply just spray the pan and leave it alone. Personally I like the sugar option because if you manage to let the banana bread survive past the state of warmth, the sugars will turn the crust a little bit crispy for an extra sweet surprise.

Fill and bake!

These are actually a little over filled as you will see in the following pictures that you can no longer see the hole in the top. From far away you would just assume these are oversized muffins instead of the quaint petite bunts. I baked these for 30 minutes at 350*F. If you were going to go with one single loaf you would bake for more like 40-50 minutes, and if you wanted muffins (which I haven’t done yet, but now that I think about it…) I’m sure the baking time would be shorter again. Definitely rack the pan in the middle of the oven making sure not to over brown the bottom since the larger loafs would be cooking for much longer.

Seriously YUM! No go ahead, get a pen or pencil and write down the following ingredients so you can make your own ASAP!

Bertie’s Banana Bread Ingredient list: 1 1/4C     All Purpose Flour 1tsp        Baking Soda 1/2          Cloves 1/2         Salt 1/2         Vanilla extract 1/2         Unsalted Butter (Room Temp) 1C          White Sugar 1/2         Toasted Walnut ( or Pecan) 2lrg        Eggs 2-3          Very ripe bananas (~1cup mashed) 1C          Chocolate Chips

Bon Appétit!!! 

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Blueberry Muffins

One word to describe these muffins… “NOM”!

It was Valentine’s morning and I was in the mood to do something nice, and I figured breakfast in bed would be a nice change! So I quietly scurried from the room, down to the kitchen to clang around. I really had a hankering for Blueberry muffins! The bummer is, as we get into the winter months fresh blueberries aren’t always close at hand! If you remember my Blueberry Upside-Down cake from back in the summer you’d remember that The Boss and I did some berry picking and may or may not have “over picked”, leaving us with about 2 gallons of frozen blueberries! Thus, I will crack into the stash!

First step is to cook down about a cup and a half of frozen blueberries. Basically we are making a blueberry filling for the muffins; this gives them a really great flavor boost and helps keep them from drying out while hanging out on the counter (though mine rarely ever last that long!).

There was about 1Tbsp added to the frozen berries, and that was it, let the heat do the rest as they boil down and thicken.

While all that is happening on the stove top, I get the rest of the goods together. First set the oven to heat up to 350. Because I wasn’t thinking the night before to take out a stick of butter I had to soften the butter in the microwave. Careful, this is an important set that can be a game changer for the recipe! If the butter is either too melty or too hard it’s going to affect the way the ingredients adhere to the fats and changes the consistency of the batter which ultimately effects the fluffiness of the muffin! So for your microwaving needs, in order to gauge if your butter is in fact “softened” or at room temperature, you should be able to gently push you finger into the butter and the butter be able to hold the impression!

Go ahead and add 1cup & 2Tbsp sugar and 2 large eggs to the mixing bowl, using paddle attachment work together until light and fluffy. Then drop in 1/4 cup of vegetable oil, and the 4tbsp of softened butter; stir until combined.

The next step calls for Buttermilk. Well, if I didn’t think to take out a stick of butter the night before, I certainly didn’t swing by the grocery to grab a carton of butter milk! A really easy substitute for buttermilk is Milk and white vinegar. 1 cup of milk plus 1Tbsp white vinegar (or lemon juice) will do the job, and for the most part, everyone has milk and either of the acids hanging out in the house. So lets get 1 cup of buttermilk mixed up with 1.5 tsp of vanilla and combine with batter.

 

Next step, in a separate bowl whisk together the dry ingredients and then add to batter. Do not over work the batter; batter should look lumpy with clumps of dry flour. Dry ingredients include: 2.5cups of all purpose flour, 2.5tsp baking powder,& 1tsp salt. ** I also opted to add 1tsp of cinnamon and 1/2tsp of cloves. Nutmeg would also be great option- it’s just what you like**

Try not to eat all the batter, I promise the baked goods are worth the wait! Go ahead and measure out 1 heaping cup of blueberries and fold them into the batter. Then scoop out the batter into the muffin pan, this batch should yield about 1.5 dozen muffins.

We are almost done! Remember the blueberry jam we made earlier? It’s time to deploy the goodness! Using a butter knife create little wells in the muffin batter, and then with a teaspoon measure scoop out the blueberry sauce and fill up the wells. Last but not least, and this is optional yet highly recommended, I sprinkle the tops of the muffins with a little white sugar! Now Bake! 15-17 minutes.

Then EAT!

And eat we did! I used a little creativity to make a serving platter, and managed to get the goods up to the bedroom to where the Boss was still sleeping soundly!

 

Have you done something nice lately? Go ahead… give these muffins a whirl, you will not be disappointed!

The Recipe:

Berry Filling:
1 heaping cup of blueberries (fresh or frozen)
1 tbsp sugar

Muffins:
1 cup & 2Tbsp sugar
2 large eggs
1/4 cup of vegetable oil
4 tbsp of softened butter
** 1 cup of buttermilk
1.5 tsp of vanilla
2.5 cups of all purpose flour
2.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp of Cinnamon (optional)
1/2 tsp Cloves (optional)
1 cup Blueberries (Fresh or frozen, and Heaping is always good!)

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