Cream Cheese Filled Pumpkin Muffins

These all started with a trip to the pumpkin patch.  Every year our daycare center goes to the local pumpkin patch.  It is like a child wonderland for Halloween.  Hot cider, doughnuts, haunted houses, and lots of land for running wild once your sugar high kicks in.  Last year when Monkey was an the only little one in the house we kept him home with us until it was time to meet up with the school bus to drive to the pumpkin patch.  We figured he wouldn't want to ride the school bus but would prefer to ride to the pumkin patch in the quiet SUV with his parents.  We were wrong.  Oh so very wrong.  So wrong in fact that we listened to him talk about missing the chance to take the yellow bus to the patch all morning.  "Eh... he's two," we thought "he will forget about it in an hour."  He did not forget about it in an hour, nor a day, month, or the rest of the year.  The topic came up enough that I began to count down the days until the next pumpkin patch trip so he could ride the yellow bus and get it out of his system.  At least we didn't have to ride in this.

So month after month he brought up the bus, and it was always followed by this.... "remember we went to the coffee shop before the pumpkin patch and we got the pumpkin bread with the squishy stuff inside?"  "Yes buddy, I remember that." "Can we have the bread again?" "Yes buddy, we can have the bread again."  However in the mad rush that is always present in our house we did not get leave on time.  My husband tried to calm me by saying "It's not a big deal, we can drive him if we're late." To which I replied "No flipping way!  I am not listening to his mourn the loss of a school bus ride again for an entire year.  It might drive him to pre-school therapy sessions."

We managed to literally get on the bus this year but we did not have time for bread.  So to make amends and forego a year of.... "Remeber when you forgot the bread because you are the worse Mother EVER and it was worse thing that has ever happened to me since you made me ride with you to the pumpkin patch?" I decided I could just make the bread at home.  How hard can it be.

Step one... find a pumpkin

Or two, or a few hundred

Roast the pumpkin and puree, or simple open a can of pureed pumpkin from the store.  For ease this year I did not make my own pumpkin which is sill really because I made fresh baby food every day and there is no difference really.  Next?  Locate your loaf pans... or if your kitchen is a disaster and you can't bear the thought of the avalanche that will be caused when you attempt to extract a loaf pan or two, use your very readily available muffin tins instead.  The concept is the same.  The recipe makes two full size loafs, 5 mini loaves, or 18 muffins.

While picking out your pumpkins at the pumpkin patch watch out for spiders,

and bees.

Cream Cheese Filled Bread Goods
adapted from The Joy of Baking

Ingredients

Cream Cheese Filling

8 ounce package cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tablespoons all purpose flour

Pumpkin Bread

1 cup pecans or walnuts
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
4 large eggs
2 cups granulated white sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 - 15 ounce can pure pumpkin, or homemade
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Method

Bread

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and place rack in the center of the oven. Butter and lightly flour two - 9 x 5 x 3 inch (23 x 13 x 8 cm) loaf pans, 5 mini loaf pans, or your muffin tins

Nuts

Place the nuts on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 - 10 minutes or until brown and fragrant. Cool completely and then chop coarsely.

Cream Cheese Filling

In your food processor, process the cream cheese just until smooth. Add the sugar and process just until smooth and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, processing just until incorporated. Do not over process. Stir in the flour.

Bread

In a large bowl, sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

In another large bowl, whisk the eggs until lightly beaten. Add the sugar and melted butter and whisk until blended. Whisk or stir in the pumpkin, water, vanilla extract, and nuts.
Add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture and stir just until the ingredients are combined. (A few streaks of flour is fine.) Do not over mix as it will make the bread tough.

Divide the batter in half. Take one half and divide it evenly between the two prepared pans. Divide the cream cheese filling in half and place each half of filling on top the two pans of batter, smoothing the tops. Top with the remaining half of batter (use two spoons to place small dollops of batter on top of the filling). For muffins, divide the batter in two. Use half for the bottom of the muffins and half for the top. To be honest in the future I will take the extra effort to pull out the bread pans it has to be easier. Bake the breads for about 55 - 65 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Place pans on a wire rack and let cool for about 10 minutes before removing breads from pans. Can serve warm, cold, or at room temperature. Store leftovers in the refrigerator or else freeze for later use.

Banana-Chocolate Chip Muffins... a toddler's lesson

My husband and I take turns getting up with our son on the weekends.  On the weekends where Saturday is my day to get up I like to bake with the little guy.  He loves it, and then we have breakfast at the same time.  It's a win-win situation.  Well the husband is in New Orleans so that means it was definitely my turn to get up.  Last night after I put him to bed and organized the groceries for the week I noticed that I still had bananas from last week and I had bought another bunch.  I also noticed last weeks were not looking so hot.  A quick poke told me the bananas were either destined for some kind of baked good or the trash.  Always attempting to do better with the amount of food I waste I decided a baked good would work perfectly and cover the baking for the morning as well. 

First step is to pre-measure everything unless you have patience of steel.  Nothing like trying to level a cup of flour with a little person grabbing your elbow while chanting "I help you Mommy" about 50 times in 2 minutes.  I think my child could have a future as an auctioneer.  I try to use big containers to decrease the likely hood of things spilling onto the counter.  Any container will do as you can see.

I saw two recipes for Banana-chocolate chip muffins on the blogs I read every week but I couldn't remember which ones, so I just googled and clicked on the first thing I saw that had good reviews.  These were perfect, and easy enough for him to help with, always a perk.  The hardest part about this recipe was convincing him we had to leave the muffins to cool until the chocolate was no longer molten lava.

make sure YOU wash their hands as you never know where they are going to stick them

Banana-Chocolate Chip Muffins

Lois Gordon, allrecipes.com

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/2 cup vegetable oil
*1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

*I used vanilla because it's what I had (again with the food waste reduction act of 2010).  I don't think it made a difference.

Method

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In another bowl, combine the egg, oil, yogurt and vanilla. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in bananas and chocolate chips. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full. Bake at 350 degrees F for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.

Orange Blueberry Muffins

I have roughly 2 weeks left to the semester and while all I want to do is play guitar, cook, and share recipes, what I really have to do is bust out some results for work and spend all my free time studying.

These were fantastic, so I had to share them.  They are the perfect balance of sweet and citrus.  I intend on making them as lemon-blueberry next time.  This is a large batch and makes either 15 regular muffins or 8 "Texas" muffins according to the person whom I stole the recipe from.  I'm not sure if that is an actual type of muffin or if it's just a play on everything being bigger in Texas.

I especially loved them because if you were to say cut out all processed foods as torture a lifestyle change your availablility of sweets without guilt would drop tremendously, and these felt like having dessert for breakfast.  Another bonus is they lasted for 3 days at room temperature.  They probably could have lasted 4 or 5 but honestly there weren't any left to find out.

Orange Blueberry Muffins
Adapted (only because I messed up) from Key Ingredient Recipes

Ingredients

Muffins
1 cup milk
½ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
½ cup sour cream
2 large eggs
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
3 ½ cups all purpose flour
1 cup sugar1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
Zest of 1 orange
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries tossed in a bit of flour

Orange Glaze
¼ cup freshly squeezed orange juice ( added all my juice to the muffin batter by accident so I used lemon juice here)
1 ½ cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon grated orange zest (and lemon zest here… must learn to follow directions)

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease muffin tins (makes about 15 muffins). Whisk together the milk, ½ cup of the orange juice, sour cream, eggs, and butter in a medium mixing bowl.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.  Pour the milk mixture into the dry ingredients and stir just until the flour is incorporated. Gently fold the orange zest into the batter, then gently fold the blueberries into the batter.

Spoon the batter into the muffin pan, filling each up just ot the top. Bake the muffins for about 25 minutes, until they are golden brown around the edges and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Cool the muffins in the pan for about 5 minutes, then transfer them to a cooling rack and glaze.

To make the glaze: combine all three ingredients in a medium bowl. Take each muffin and dip it upside down into the glaze. Twist the muffin a little as you pull it out. Set it on a cooling rack. Repeat with remaining muffins. Serve warm or cool. Keeps for about 3 days, but I doubt they will last that long.

Blueberry-Sour Cream Muffins

The weather is finally warming up, the holidays are over, and school is back underway. Things are settling in fabulously and I am finding time and energy to cook again.

Now these don't exactly fall into the healthy categories but they do have blueberries so maybe you can convince yourself that they are considered a fruit serving.  And it's fun for the family.

While you might be able to find some boxed muffins that are lower in calories there is no way they taste this good.  Besides you know how I feel about pre-packaged, dehydrated food.

This recipe also comes from the woman that gave us the failed meatball recipe so she has redeemed herself in my eyes. I think it could use more lemon however... but then again she just said blueberry muffin not lemon-blueberry.... maybe I will figure out a way to turn them into lemon-blueberry muffins next time I make them.

Blueberry-Sour Cream Muffins
adapted from Eugina Bone (appearing in Food and Wine December 2009)

Ingredients
Topping (you can halve this to make it lower in calories)
½ cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Muffins
1 ½ cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 large egg
¾ cup sugar
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
1 rounded cup sour cream (I used light, but you could probably use fat free)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
¾ teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1 rounded cup frozen blueberries

Method
Topping
Preheat the oven to 375o. In a medium bowl, combine the brown sugar, flour, butter and cinnamon. Rub with your fingers to form coarse crumbs. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Muffins
Butter 12-cup muffin pan. In a medium bowl, whisk 1 ½ cups of flour with the baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large bowl, using a hand-held mixer beat the egg at medium speed until frothy. Add the sugar and melted butter and beat until pale yellow, 1 minute. Beat in the sour cream, vanilla and lemon zest until blend. Add the dry ingredients and beat at low speed until almost blended. In a bowl, toss the blueberries with the remaining 1 tablespoon of flour. Using a rubber spatula, fold the blueberries into the batter.

Fill the muffin cups three-fourths full of batter and sprinkle with the topping. Bake for 25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Remove the muffins from the pan and let cool on a rack. Muffins can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days.