The muffin that will change your life...

Seriously. 

I mean...woah.

It started with a desire to make muffins for us to have for breakfast for a few days, which I often do on the weekends.  I wanted to find a good oatmeal-based muffin because for one, they're yummy, and two, they are much more filling than just a flour-y muffin.  Google came to the rescue with this recipe from Simple Bites.  The creator, Aimee gives tips on how to improve your own muffin recipes and shares a basic oatmeal muffin recipe that you can whip up with your desired add-ins.  I chose to mix in white chocolate chips and fresh blueberries.  My mouth is watering just thinking about them...

Please.  Make these soon.  And please don't let the pictures make you think they are any less delicious than they really are.  Still having to use the stupid phone for pictures until our camera is fixed. Here are the ingredients for the version I made. Please note that the first step of soaking the oats takes an hour, so make sure you start these early if you want them ready in time for breakfast!

White Chocolate Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins

• 1 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon white vinegar (if you have it on hand, you can use 1 cup buttermilk in place of the milk and vinegar)
• 1 cup rolled oats (not quick-cooking oats)
• 1 egg, room temperature
• 1/4 cup brown sugar (recipe calls for dark, I used light...ain't no thang)
• 1/2 cup butter melted, slightly cooled
• 1 cup plus 1 tablespoons all-purpose flour (I used half whole wheat flour)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3/4 cup white chocolate chips
• 1  cup blueberries

1. Combine milk, vinegar, and oats in a large bowl and let sit for one hour.

2. Preheat oven to 375 and grease twelve muffin cups or use paper liners.

3. Add egg and brown sugar to oat mixture and combine.  Stir in melted butter.

4. Stir in flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and spices. Stir gently, do not over mix.

5. Gently fold in the blueberries and white chocolate.

6. Fill muffin cups about 2/3 full.  Doing this I got 10 muffins.  10 muffins did not go far in our house...

7. Bake for 12-14 minutes.  The recipe calls for 10-12, but when you're using fresh fruit it can take longer.  Bake until light brown.  Let muffins cool in pan for at least 10 minutes before digging in.

Try these and let me know if they don't make you a certified muffin nut. I promise you'll never want to resort to a Martha White mix ever again! I had visions of quitting my job and making and selling just these muffins to support our family.  Until I get my commercial-sized oven (and a place to put it) I will settle for sharing the recipe with you :)  I think next time I will try the cranberry/pecan version.  And by next time, I mean AFTER I make these again...

Cast Party Wednesday

Tasty Tuesday Parade of Foods

You asked for it: Peach Muffins!

Total truth: this is not my picture, although I wish it was! Thank you, interwebs! (My focus was on EATING the muffins, not photographing them!)

We took a trip to the farmer's market after church recently and loaded up on eggs, squash, dog biscuits, handmade ravioli, and PEACHES! I knew I would be using them in something like a cake or muffin.  I found a recipe I had copied and pasted from some website months and months ago (sorry I can't give credit where credit is due...) and knew it was the perfect time to try it!

The original recipe was "cobblerish" because people were adding a sugar/crumble topping.  I tend to not do this kind of topping on our muffins because I usually make them on the weekend and throw them in a freezer bag for us to grab and heat up for quick breakfasts, and I've found that sometime the topping doesn't hold up well (or just falls off in the bag).  But if you're making this and eating it right away, feel free to do something on top. I just know when I mentioned on facebook that I was making Peach Cobbler Muffins that people got very excited, so I wanted you to know how they became just peach muffins.  They're still delicious :)

Here's what I used and what I did.  Feel free to customize! I do several things to "healthify" our muffins, so you may not like using the subsitutions I do.  We've gotten used to our muffins being mostly whole wheat and not as sweet, but that may not be your thing... I usually mix in some ground flax seed to up the nutrional value and make them more filling, but I was out this time around.

Peach Muffins

• 3 cups flour (I used 2 cups whole wheat and 1 cup all purpose flour)
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teapsoon baking soda
• 1 teaspon salt
• 1 cup unsweetened applesauce and 1/4 cup vegetable oil (or just 1 1/4 cup oil; I almost always use applesauce in place of oil in muffin/bread recipes)
• 3 eggs
• splash of vanilla extract
• 1 1/2-2 cups sugar (I used 1 1/2 cups and they were plenty sweet. I may try using some brown sugar next time)
• 2 cups chopped peaches (Feel free to use frozen or canned, the fresh peaches were just too delicious. I ended up using 2 large peaches, but may do 3 next time)
• handful of chopped pecans (this wasn't in the original recipe, but why NOT add pecans???

1. Preheat oven to 400 and grease your muffin pan.  I made 12 large muffins from this recipe.

2. In a large bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients, including the chopped pecans.

3. In a smaller bowl mix eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar.

4.  Stir the wet mixture into the dry mixture just until combined. Fold in peaches. If your batter seems too thick, just add a little milk.

5.  Fill up your muffin pan (and add topping, if you want) and bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the muffin comes out clean.  Let muffins cool for a bit and then serve.

6. Come back and leave me a comment letting me know if you liked them!

We both liked these and I will probably make them again the next time I have some fresh peaches that need to be used.  The ones I made were really filling because of the whole wheat flour and they were sweet but not too sweet. They were a nice change of pace from the muffins I've been making a lot recently (peanut butter banance muffins, raisin bran muffins, and strawberry-banana muffins).

And as an additional, unrelated note of goodness... look at the pretties growing in my front yard! I love this athena plant (a peony hybrid) and it's constantly showing new blooms.  I know my neighbor thinks I'm crazy when I walk into the flower bed and take pictures, but oh well! Happy Thursday!

Cast Party Wednesday

Delicately Constructed Friday

Tasty Tuesday Parade of Foods

Cashberry Chip Cookies

I totally just made that name up. It was either that or Cranshew Chip Cookies... just doesn't sound as cute. :)

I love to bake! It's pretty common for me to spend my Sunday afternoons whipping up big batches of homemade muffins so that I can put them in the freezer for us to heat up for quick breakfasts throughout the next couple of weeks.  I'll definitely be sharing some our favorite muffin recipes soon. (Be expecting lots of recipes that use bananas... I ALWAYS have several bags of ripe bananas in the freezer. Don't you? haha)

But today is no day for muffins.

No, today is a cookie kind of day!

I've made a lot of different cookies since we got married, but this is probably my FAVE.  I made them for Christmas this past year because they seemed so festive and pretty with the cranberries, but seriously, these are so so so good, why only make them for holidays?? I cannot remember where I got the orginial recipe, but I do remember that it called for macadamia nuts.  While I love macadamia nuts (especially with white chocolate) I didn't have any at the time and thought cashews would be just as yummy.  Yummy they were!! This dough is very buttery and I love that it uses a full tablespoon of vanilla extract, as a lot of cookies only use a teaspoon or two. Feel free to use milk/semi-sweet chocolate in place of the white chocolate, or use a different kind of nut.  I keep several different kinds of nuts in the freezer all the time, so with most cookie recipes I just use whatever I want, but I love the cashews in this one.

Cashberry Chip Cookies

• 3 cups all-purpose flour (I used 2 cups AP flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour)
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened (I use Smart Balance spread with no problem)
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup white chocolate/vanilla baking chips
• 1 cup chopped cashews
• 1 cup dried cranberries

Mix the flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside.

Use a handheld mixer (or if you're one of those lucky ducks that I am so envious of that have a Kitchenaid mixer) to cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar.

Mix in the eggs and vanilla (and get really, really excited when you remember that your homemade vanilla will be ready in just three more months!).

Slowly add flour mixture just until combined (don't go crazy with your stirring here). 

mental note: If you're going to go anywhere with this blogging thing you've GOT to get some nicer mixing bowls... these old things from the college days just don't photograph so well.

Once that's all mixed up just add your cranberries, chocolate chips, and cashews.  Try to snack on equal amounts of all three as you're mixing so the ratio isn't off for the actual cookies.  This is also a good tip to keep in mind when you're bringing fast food home and eating french fries in the car.  Eat some from both yours AND your husband's so he won't be able to tell a difference.  See there? Cooking advice and marriage advice all rolled into one post. Genious.

Just a note about saving money on baking supplies... I get a lot of my stuff from Aldi's because they have great prices on baking supplies.  For this recipe, I used Aldi's white chocolate chips and dried cranberries. I buy Groupons for Nutty Guys to stock up on nuts because they have great quality products and a lot of organic stuff to choose from. 

Now just drop heaping teaspoons of the dough on an ungreased cookies sheet and bake at 350 for 10 minutes or so (just get them out when they're as soft as you like).  I really like letting my cookies cool using a wire cooling rack, so use one if you have one.

Enjoy! I got 40 cookies out of this dough.

Optional: I mixed up this dough and then put heaping teaspoons of the mix on cookie sheet lined with wax paper, then let it sit in the freezer until the dough was pretty firm (you can put the dough close together because you're not baking them- they won't spread out). Then I dropped the "dough balls" into a gallon-sized ziploc bags and threw it back in the freezer.  I will say that because this dough is really sticky with all that butter, they didn't firm up as much as other cookies I've made, so next time I will form the dough into a roll and put it in the freezer rather than individual cookies. Either way, now we have homemade cookie dough to pop in the oven any old time we want, and we can just bake as many as we need.  This is a great time-saver for those last-minute dinner guests or when your rockstar of a hubby has friends over to "jam".  Boys love cookies.

"flash freezing" cookie dough

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