Strawberry Cherry Banana Muffins

I had a jar of cherry jam, bought last fall at the vegetable stand. I also had the end of a bag of frozen strawberry and banana slices. Combined: fruit muffins.

Rhubarb muffins (maybe the last batch here)

Rhubarb, cut this morning

 A double batch of sour cream rhubarb muffins. Probably our last from that plant.

Easter baking

These are what I'm calling Easter Morning Muffins, and they're going in the freezer to save for our church's annual bring-your-baking-before-church event this Sunday. Also known in MB circles as the Paska Party.

What's in them, besides sprinkles? Basic muffin batter, white chocolate chips, one banana, and a spoonful of raspberry jam.

(This is Paska. I don't make Paska.)

It makes more sense when you see it (Do-Vember #16)

Do-Vember

Scientists experiment. They change the variables and see what happens. What's the optimum range for whatever? How much is too much, what amount is just enough, and how much margin do you have? This kind of testing goes on all the time, everywhere from high-tech labs testing pharmaceuticals, to parents figuring out how long a child's afternoon nap should be or how many toys are enough without being too many, to the people who figured out that Ted Talks should be exactly 18 minutes long.

Sometimes it's nice when someone else does the work for you. If you trust their reporting, it could save you having to reinvent the wheel, or, as in today's Pinterest link, the cake and the cookie. What happens if you put in one egg? Two? Three? How do cookies change if you use white sugar? brown sugar? Some other sweetener? Butter, margarine, or some other kind of fat? You may have seen magazine articles illustrating this before (I have one stuck in my recipe binder that shows different oatmeal cookie results), but the post linked on Pinterest has collected up a few useful ones. It's helpful when the muffins turn out tough or pointy, or the cookies spread too much. Like a scientist, you can ask: what caused that? What do I need to change?

This kind of experimenting is actually something that Charlotte Mason wanted her students to practice--within reason, as they didn't want to waste food on things that wouldn't work. There were times when you might want your little cakes to be richer, or sweeter, or have some other special quirk--so knowing how to adjust a recipe for taste or ingredients was a useful thing to learn. If I were teaching that to children now, I think I'd use muffins as an example: there's a basic formula (I took mine from The Tightwad Gazette years ago), but the special ingredients, amount of sweetener, amount of fat and so on can be up to the baker.  Sometimes you can take advantage of a material's particular quirks: a non-food example would be strips of crocheting that tend to curl and twirl around themselves. That can be a problem, but if you're making legs for an octopus, it's exactly what you want.

But it can be useful just to see someone else's results.

My grandma didn't make sweet potato bread (Do-Vember #8)

Do-Vember

But I'm going to try this recipe anyway.

Today's Pinterest project is inspired by the roundup post 25 Old-Fashioned Recipes Your Grandma Knew By Heart. Pie crust, biscuits, apple pie, and cranberry sauce. My grandma liked to cook, but I doubt that she made all the things listed, and not by heart. She was more of a church cookbook kind of cook.

Sweet potato bread also sounds like a good chance to use the mini-loaf pans that don't get used too often.

Done!

What's for supper?

Tonight's dinner menu:

Frozen lasagna
Spaghetti squash
Frozen peas

Pear muffins cake (like apple muffins cake but made, obviously, with pears)

What's for supper?, and a muffin recipe

Tonight's dinner menu:

Chicken chili (from our freezer meals)
Salad: romaine hearts and broccoli slaw veggies (something easy to put together from the Giant Tiger produce shelf)
Go-withs: cheese, cottage cheese, mini rice cakes, things like that

Apple Maple Muffins

How do you make Apple Maple Muffins?

Start with last night's dessert: apples baked with a little homemade pancake syrup. Chop the apples small.

Combine dry ingredients for a regular batch of muffins: two cups flour, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 2 tsp. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. salt.  In another bowl or measuring cup, combine 1/2 cup oil, 1 egg, and about 3/4 cup milk. Combine the wet and dry ingredients along with the apples and any of their syrup. Add a little more liquid if needed. Spoon into paper-lined muffin cups and bake about 15 minutes at 375 degrees. They don't have to get too brown.

What's for supper? Soup and bread night

Tonight's dinner menu

Split pea soup in the slow cooker
Country White Bread in the bread machine

Assorted leftovers from the rest of the week

Pineapple-Granola Muffins
Apples and oranges.

Slow Cooker Split Pea Soup

Adapted from a recipe in The Perfect Basket, by Diane Phillips.

Ingredients:

2 cups yellow split peas (one of the little bags from the grocery store)
1/2 cup brown rice (optional)
1 bay leaf
2 tsp. dried marjoram
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. white pepper (I didn't have any so I used black pepper)
1 quart chicken or vegetable broth plus more water as needed
Some chopped frozen onion
A couple of carrots, peeled and chopped
Three stalks of celery, chopped

If you weren't going to do this in the slow cooker, you could start by sauteing the vegetables in a bit of butter or oil, then adding the split peas, broth, and seasonings. I just put everything into the slow cooker, adding water to fill it maybe three-quarters full. I set it on High for a few hours, then turned it to Low partway through the afternoon when it was bubbling hard. I think it would work fine to leave it on Low all day.

What's for supper? Shrove Tuesday, but not pancakes.

Tonight's dinner menu:

Salmon, cooked on the stovetop
Brown rice
Last night's salad and/or leftover sweet potatoes
Cheesy Salsa Corn Muffins (I left the cornmeal out, if you're wondering why they aren't very yellow)

Epiphany Dinner

On the table: Wise Men.

On the CD player: lute music.

On the menu:
Sausages
French fries
Baked beans
Salad

Applesauce Spice Star Muffins.

Use-it-up Cranberry Blueberry Bran Flake Muffins

Use-it-up Sweet and Crunchy Cranberry Blueberry Bran Flake Muffins

Dry ingredients:
A lot of crumbly bran flakes from the bottom of the box (at least a cupful)
Enough flour to bring the total up to 2 to 2 1/2 cups of cereal and flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder

Wet ingredients:
1 cup of homemade cranberry sauce that also had some blueberries stirred into it
1 egg
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup milk, or enough to moisten

Mix the dry and wet ingredients separately, then combine gently. Don't mash the fruit too hard. Don't worry if the batter starts to get that strange greyish-purple blueberry tinge, it will mostly bake out. Bake in sprayed or lined muffin tins, at 375 degrees F or whatever your preferred muffin temperature is. Makes 1 dozen regular or 2 dozen mini muffins.

Pear Oatmeal Muffins (recipe)

Pear Oatmeal Muffins, made with a cupful of cooked pears.

Wet ingredients:

Leftover cooked pears, run through the food processor so they resemble applesauce
1/2 cup oil
1 egg
About 1/2 cup milk, or enough to sufficiently moisten the batter

Dry ingredients:

1 1/2 cups flour and 1 cup oatmeal, or thereabouts
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
Spices as needed: our pears already had ginger and orange in them, so I didn't add any

Combine wet and dry ingredients separately, then mix and correct the amount of liquid.  Spoon into greased or paper-lined muffin cups.  Bake 15 to 20 minutes at 375 degrees F.

What's for supper, after the science experiment?

Tonight's dinner menu:

Skillet casserole made from ground chicken, noodles, and leftover broccoli-cheese sauce from yesterday (I made it to go over baked potatoes)

Instant Red Cabbage Slaw

Chocolate Mini Muffins, made with last night's chocolate pudding as the liquid

How to make Instant Red Cabbage Slaw: Buy a small head of red cabbage for science class.  Pull two leaves from it and use them for cabbage water in a carbon dioxide demonstration.  Think of things to do with the rest of the cabbage that people will actually eat.  Rinse a few more of the leaves and run them through the food processor with some carrot.  Mix with bottled Caesar dressing (or other slaw dressing of your choice).  Eat with enjoyment.

Magic Blueberry Muffins

Magic because they looked so weird going into the oven, but they turned out fine--actually one of my better blueberry efforts.  Blueberry muffins can come out strangely green if the berries react with the other ingredients; these started out frighteningly purple, but baked into just a nice brownness.

I don't have the exact recipe, but this is what I did: combined all the wet ingredients for basic muffin batter, plus some frozen blueberries and a spoonful of strawberry jam, in the blender.  I combined the dry ingredients in a bowl, stirred in more whole blueberries, and then mixed in what looked like the purple smoothie from the blender.  It looked seriously yucky at that point, but since I had gone that far, I carried on, spooned the batter into muffin papers, and baked them.  Success!

Two other things: they peel out of the papers better if you let them cool first.  Most muffins do, but fruity ones especially.  And store any leftovers in the fridge.

How to make a cranberry cake

Mama Squirrel's Applesauce-Cranberry Cake (adapted from this Canadian Living apple-spice muffin recipe)

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup wheat bran or rolled oats (I used quick oats)
1-1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg (I used only about 1/2 tsp.)
1 tsp allspice (I used about 1/4 tsp.)
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup sweetened applesauce (I used unsweetened)
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
1-1/2 cups diced peeled apples (I used about a cupful of chopped cranberries instead; you could use a combination)

Mix the dry and liquid ingredients separately.  Blend together and add in the cranberries (or chopped apples).  Spread into a large (greased) pie dish, or a 9 x 13 inch pan, and bake at 350 degrees as a cake, for about 30 minutes (roughly); or spoon into muffin cups and bake at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until done.  If you bake it as cake, test to be sure it's done in the middle; the middle of mine was done but just slightly squishy.  Eat for dessert or for breakfast.

A can of pineapple? (What's in your hand?)

Canned pineapple is a regular occupant of our pantry shelf, but sometimes it sits there awhile waiting to get used.  But there really are a lot of ways to eat canned pineapple, even if you bought rings and want crushed, or the other way round.  A food processor will turn bigger pieces into smaller ones quickly, or you can just get out the knife or scissors and chop or snip.  If you have small pieces and need bigger ones, you can often use them anyway; upside-down cake tastes just as good with tidbits as with rings.

Here are some ideas for using up a can on the shelf...or the half-can in the fridge.

1.  Freeze it and run it through the food processor as sherbet.  If you freeze the fruit plus juice in ice cube trays (without processing it), you can let kids eat the cubes instead of Popsicles, or suck on them if they're not feeling well. After our first Squirreling was born, I was told to drink pineapple juice to keep my fluids up (it was supposed to be less irritating for the baby than citrus juice.)

2.  Put it on Hawaiian pizza. Or fruit pizza.

3.  Add it to sweet and sour meatballs, or ham, or one of those oddball baked-bean recipes.

4.  Make Potluck Cake.  Or add it to carrot cake or carrot muffins, or another fruit bread like banana bread.  Pineapple Purée  (see #1) works great in baking.

5.  Combine it with rhubarb, in muffins or other desserts.

6.  Heat undrained crushed pineapple and thicken with cornstarch, as a sauce for cake or waffles.  This works better if you have more juice, less fruit.

7.  Make fruit salad.

8.  If you have big chunks, put on toothpicks with other bits of fruit, marshmallows, etc., for mini-kebabs.  Or on skewers with peppers and meat or chicken, for big-kebabs.

9.  Mix with cottage cheese or yogurt, granola, and other fruit for breakfast sundaes.  I know that's basically fruit salad again, but it tastes different in the morning, doesn't it?

10.  Smoothies.  Or eat the fruit and then add the juice to other fruit juice, punch, or lemonade.

11. (bonus--I knew there was one I'd forgotten). Make Sue Gregg's Pineapple Yogurt Pie.

Linked from Festival of Frugality #384 at Evolving Personal Finance.

What's for supper? Sort of Chinese

Tonight's dinner menu:

Honey-garlic chicken
Rice noodles (free from neighbour)
Frozen stir-fry vegetable mix

Lemon poppyseed muffins, made to use up half a cup of lemon sauce in the fridge

What's for supper? Quick and easy

Tonight's dinner menu:

Slow-cooker split pea soup
Pepperoni Pizza Muffins

Bananas, yogurt, or whatever comes to hand for dessert

Two kinds of oat flour muffins

Last night I had a committee meeting here, and the snacks had to be wheat free and dairy free.  (Oats were okay.)  So I ran some rolled oats through the food processor and made a batch of mini-muffins from the Common Room's Banana Oatmeal Bread recipe.

I had enough oat flour left to make these Carrot Spice Cupcakes from Canadian Living.  They're not meant to be wheat-free, but the oat flour does work in them--I just added a bit more than the cupful of all-purpose originally called for.  I also left out the nuts, and blended the last little bit of oat flour with some oil and cinnamon sugar to make a streusel sprinkle for the tops.

It worked!

Raspberry Ripple Muffins--your style

How do you make Raspberry Ripple Muffins?

1.  Make a regular muffin batter, or buttermilk muffin batter, or sour cream muffin batter, or cake-mix-clone batter, mixing in some rolled oats for texture.  Don't make it too thin, because you'll be adding fruit.

2.  Mix in a leftover cupful of the raspberry sauce that you very quickly concocted for last night's dessert (frozen raspberries, microwaved with a globule of jam that had a spoonful of cornstarch stirred in).  Don't mix it too hard or you'll lose the ripple effect.  If you don't have said cupful of fruit puree, you can always cook some up fresh.

3.  Bake in muffin papers until firm and just a bit browned.  Eat while fresh, or store in the refrigerator (I think--I wasn't sure about leaving them on the counter).

4.  If you don't want muffins, you could try this with pancakes.

That's all!