Today is a bittersweet day. Today I am dropping my oldest daughter off for her first day of preschool. It's her first-ever first day of school. Hard to believe she is starting school already! Seems like just yesterday I was carrying her around on my hip and teaching her words. Now I can't get her to stop saying words!
Aside from dropping Lena off at school (and subsequently sobbing as I drive away), today is a busy day. There is a district pastors' conference being held at our church and I volunteered to make muffins. I also have to take my younger daughter to an appointment.
I was nervous to try a new muffin recipe for the conference, as my last two muffin attempts were less than stellar. They tasted okay, but they were NOT pretty. They both had the problem of the tops baking totally flat and all spread out. What causes that? I am not a baker, so when something goes wrong, I have absolutely no idea what caused it or how to fix it. What makes some muffins bake into lovely poufy "muffin tops" while some spread all the way out and look like plates sitting on top of the muffin base? If you can help me out with that, please leave me a comment.
Despite these last two failures, I decided to risk it and made a new muffin recipe yesterday for the pastors. I saw this one on MyRecipes and gave it a shot. As you can see from the pic, they turned out pretty well.
Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins
Ingredients:
1¼ cups quick-cooking oats
½ cup flour
⅓ cup whole wheat flour
⅔ cup light brown sugar
1½ tsp ground cinnamon
¾ tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 cup milk
2 tbsp canola oil
Zest of half a lemon
2 eggs
1½ cups frozen blueberries
1½ tbsp flour
Sugar in the Raw
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400°.
Place oats, flours, brown sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.
Combine milk, oil, lemon zest, and eggs in a separate bowl. Add to flour mixture; stir until just moist.
Toss berries with 1½ tbsp flour and gently fold into batter. Spoon batter into 12 muffin cups coated with cooking spray; sprinkle tops with Sugar in the Raw.
Bake at for 18 minutes or until muffins spring back when touched lightly in center. Remove from pans immediately; place on a wire rack.
Makes 12 muffins.
This is my adaptation; I changed it slightly. The original recipe made 16 muffins, so I changed it to make 12. I think all muffin recipes should be written for 12, but that's just me. The only other thing I changed was that the oats were supposed to be pulsed in a food processor, but I liked the idea of whole oats better. Since they are the quick-cooking kind, they aren't too hard or chewy in the baked muffin.
Hopefully the pastors like these muffins!
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Aww, I'm sure first day of school for the little one was exciting! And these muffins look really good (I'm actually a fan of the non-puffy type muffins!)
ReplyDeletelove blueberry muffins. Don't you hate it when you have more than one fail? I have learned my lesson with it though because now if I have to take something to work I take something I know will turn out and save the new things for when I just feel like baking. Glad your muffins turned out this time and hope your little one enjoyed going to school!
ReplyDeleteThe cause of flat topped muffins is probably that the batter was too thin.
ReplyDelete