Tuesdays with Dorie: Carrot Spice Muffins

Sorry for the extended baking hiatus! There was travel, illness and general baking malaise to deal with. But I have my baking mojo back and was very happy to make this week's selection, Carrot Spice Muffins, chosen by Nancy of The Dogs Eat the Crumbs. (I'm really jealous she got to meet Jeni of Jeni's Ice Cream!) I love making muffins because they're so easy and usually involve just tossing the ingredients together in a big bowl. The muffins were perfect for breakfast and snacking, I used pecans and golden raisins but I'm sure they'd be just as delicious with any of the other mix-ins Dorie suggested.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate Chunk Muffins

This week's selection was chosen by Bridget of The Way the Cookie Crumbles. I always like muffin recipes, they're so easy, usually the mixer is not required and they're pretty versatile.

Chocolate Chunk muffins were good, moist and very chocolately but in retrospect I think I would have liked to add dried cherries to the mix. Chocolate + cherries are so good.

Shiny

Let's talk about this:

This is my new kick-ass, awesome range with a convection oven. Hell yes. After a lot of back and forth between myself, Maytag and the Home Depot, it arrived Saturday afternoon and was installed within minutes. It is glorious and beautiful. The matching range hood was out of stock but should be delivered this weekend and hopefully installed sometime next week. After I ooohed and awwed over it for awhile, I got to baking.

 

First I made Nutella sandwich cookies. The recipe is from the (newish) Barefoot Contessa "How Easy is That?". The cookies are super buttery shortbread with ground up hazelnuts in the dough. The dough is really sticky and I added flour to make it easier to work with. I could have made the dough thinner (I think the recipe says 1/4 of an inch). I liked these so much. I took some to my aunt and my grandmother and they both really liked them.

The jam muffins are a recipe from Serious Eats and I used a jar of Bonne Maman Four Fruits preserves. Very yummy, especially warm.

I think New Oven and I are going to be very happy together.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Great Grains Muffins

These muffins seem so unsuspecting but gosh they're good, I think they might be my new favorite muffin recipe. I followed the recipe just as Dorie states, but left out nuts and used Red Flame Raisins for the fruit.

I loved the way they tasted, the cornmeal was crunchy and the maple syrup and raisins added the right amount of sweetness. I will be adding these to my weekend breakfast rotation.

Thanks to Christine of Happy Tummy for these week's selection!

Tuesdays with Dorie: Rewind - Orange Berry Muffins

This week we got to pick a previously made TWD recipe to bake. I wanted to pick something I hadn't made before and as luck would have it I had almost everything I needed on hand to make Orange Berry Muffins. 

Like most muffins these were quick and easy. The batter kind of turned greenish because of the orange juice/zest and my frozen blueberries but it wasn't too bad. My only change was using regular milk instead of buttermilk but I don't think that affected the taste too much.

Pumpkin Muffins with extras

Last week I had the good fortune of being off Thursday and Friday, thanks to a couple of holidays observed by my employers. This gave me enough free time to take my cat to the vet, work on two papers I have due next week, visit my brand-new nephew at the hospital, go to the doctor, do laundry and whip up a batch of these Pumpkin and Cream Cheese Muffins with Pecan Streusel. 

I found the recipe at Ezra Pound Cake and since I'm a sucker for pumpkin baked goods I had to make them.

They were delicious, especially warm and the cream cheese wasn't overpowering. As Rebecca mentions in her post if you want a bigger cream cheese flavor double the filling. I made a little more streusel topping than the recipe called for but it worked out fine. I did use a jumbo muffin pan so it took a tad longer to bake than if I had used a regular one. Go ahead and bake some, you'll be glad you did.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Coffee Break Muffins

Late post! I wrote this on Sunday but forgot to schedule the publishing. C'est la vie. 

This week's selection was chosen by Rhiani of Chocoholic Anonymous. These were simple muffins to put together, muffin batter is usually a one-bowl kind of recipe. They didn't take long to puff up and came out of the oven looking lovely. However, I was kind of disappointed in the taste. Even though there was cinnamon in the batter I don't think it helped pick up the espresso powder notes. The texture and moisture of the muffins were good but I couldn't shake the sense that they needed an extra bit of something. 

Edited to add: I am completely impressed with what Rhiani did with these muffins, she made them Salted Caramel Mochaccino cupcakes! Wowza. Go check out her blog to see what she did.