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What’s the difference between a cupcake and a muffin? This issue caused a bit of confusion while I was developing this recipe. Many of the sources that I came across wrote about similar recipes, some calling them cupcakes instead of muffins. So how did I make the final decision?
We are lucky to have an abundance of delicious carrots at our local farmers market. It’s one of my favorite purchases every week. They even come with the greens attached. I’m sure there’s a cooking method for the greens, but I haven’t yet experimented with them. Anybody have any recommendations for carrot greens? For now, the carrot greens go to enrich my compost pile. And the carrots this week went into these muffins!
I just can’t stay away from these Meyer lemons. They were destined to become another pitcher of lemonade when I had a breakthrough moment. I’d been waiting and waiting to buy poppy seeds so I could use them in bread. When we received another batch of Meyer lemons from the farm I mentioned to The Boyfriend that I could make Meyer lemon poppyseed muffins if only we could find poppy seeds at the store. My very astute boyfriend said, “You’ve got a jar of poppy seeds on your spice rack”. Well, surely he must be confusing poppy seeds with something else, right? I rushed to the kitchen, spun the spice rack around, and there it was. The jar of poppy seeds. So, Meyer lemon poppy seed muffins it was. Right away.
After all of the baking I did last week for the bake sale, I was ready to make some quick and easy muffins! I was all out of fresh fruit (oh, the horror!), and when I opened the cupboard it was the cornmeal that spoke to me. It was begging to be made into rich, buttery corn muffins with just the right amount of crumble.
I’m learning to bake vegan. I really enjoy eating vegan goodies, so naturally the next step is to learn to make them myself. I baked a vegan cake last year (before I started blogging), and it was amazing! This time, I tried my hand at vegan muffins. I don’t drink cow’s milk, but I do use buttermilk when it’s called for in a recipe. It helps keep muffins tender and lends a somewhat tangy flavor as well. So when I discovered that I could make vegan buttermilk with soy milk and a little apple cider vinegar, I decided to bake some muffins!
Banana oatmeal muffins are my go to muffin. I always have the ingredients on hand and it’s so easy to whip up a batch. My basic recipe is very forgiving. I can change it up in any number of ways and the muffins still come out delicious. This time I’ve made them healthier and added a bit of spice. Now I don’t feel so guilty when I reach for one to help me get through those last two hours of the workday!
We finally put up our Christmas lights, 6 days before Christmas! We went out to the street after dark to check them out, and realized that everyone else on our block had lights up. It sure is colorful out there! With all that Christmas spirit outside, it’s time to break out the cranberries. Christmas snuck up on me this year. I didn’t even notice the fresh cranberries at Trader Joe’s until yesterday.
I bake muffins every weekend. Then I stash them in the freezer and eat one each day at work. This challenges me to make healthy ingredient substitutions, and also to keep trying new flavors!
Autumn is my favorite season for baking. The weather is just starting to get cool enough to turn on the oven more frequently. The apple orchards in Oak Glen have fresh apple cider and a large variety of apples to choose from. Pumpkin patches have cropped up all over the area. Apples and pumpkin are two of my most favorite ingredients. A few weeks ago, on my Saturday stroll down the baking aisle at Trader Joe’s, I was ecstatic to see that they had finally made room on their shelves for cans of organic pumpkin. Just in case this pumpkin shortage that I’ve heard about is for real, I bought a few cans. |
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Copyright ©2010 Simple Math Bakery - Some Rights Reserved 
This work by Simple Math Bakery is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States. |
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