Muffins fresh from the….freezer?
Posted by Jenny Stanger in Bread and Breakfast, Recipes, Vegetarian Saturday, 3 April 2010 17:05 2 Comments
My favorite meal of the day is breakfast, because I love warm muffins, large sausage and egg omelets, waffles with fresh fruit and cream, french toast, etc..
The good news is, I have a secret on how to make fresh baked muffins as easy as pouring breakfast cereal into a bowl!
We had some pumpkin-raisin, walnut muffins this morning right after our Easter egg hunt and after a late night, and an early morning of hopping around in the snow (making Easter Bunny footprints), these muffins came in handy for a quick hearty breakfast. I took them right out of the freezer, and popped them in the oven. In 20 minutes, (while we divided up the jelly beans and chomped on giant chocolate bunnies) breakfast was ready.
Mix and Match Muffin Mix
Yield: 24 muffins
2 cups flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
2 eggs, beaten
1¼ cups filling (choose from list below)
1 cup nuts or seeds (optional)
1 cup sugar
½ cup cooking oil
Filling (do not use dried fruit)
Apples, diced
Applesauce
Apricots, chopped
Bananas, mashed
Berries
Carrots, grated
Cherries, pitted and chopped
Lemon juice (only add 1/3 cup)
Oranges, chopped
Orange juice (only add 1/3 cup)
Peaches, chopped
Pears, chopped
Pumpkin, canned (add 2 teaspoons pumpkin spice)
Strawberries (well drained)
Zucchini, grated
*Some delicious combination are banana raspberry nut, strawberry peach, and pumpkin raisin sunflower seed.
Place paper liners in a muffin pan and fill a baking sheet with paper liners and set aside. In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients. Make a well in the center of the dry mixture and set aside.
In a separate medium bowl, mix the remaining (wet) ingredients. Stir wet ingredients into flour mixture just until moistened. (Batter should be lumpy.) Spoon batter into paper liners until they are 2/3 full. (You can freeze them at this point, or bake them.)
To bake right away preheat your oven to 350 and bake the muffins for 20 min or you can freeze all the muffins for 1 hour in the muffin pan and then place frozen muffins in a large zip top bag or a plastic Tupperware container. When you are ready to use the frozen muffins, place the frozen muffins in a muffin pan and bake frozen at 350 degrees F for 20 min. Remove muffins from pan and cool on a wire rack. Serve warm topped with butter, jam or frosting.
*
I’m looking forward to trying these, but had a couple questions. First, if you’re going to bake the muffins right away, I see that the oven should be 375, but no time is given (vs. 350 and 20 min. from the freezer). Also, you say not to use dried fruit, but raisins and cranberries are in the suggested flavors (but not listed separately under “fillings”) … could you clarify for me? Also, when using orange juice or lemon juice, do you limit it to 1/3 cup and still add other fillings to reach the 1 1/4 cups total filling, or do you need to limit the total filling to a smaller amount? Thanks!
Thank you for your comment. Sorry for the confusion and the delay in getting back to you. My husband has been on a business trip and I am out of town with my 4 little girls. It has been hard to find time to get online.
As for the two different baking temperatures, I decided to lower the baking temperature just before publishing this book, and for some reason, we all missed seeing that error. I was just sick to see it in the new book when I made muffins the other day. I thought the book was perfect…but alas there is one error. The correct temp. is 350 degrees for 20 minutes. I made the adjustments on the recipe in this post. The reason why raisins and cranberries are not listed under as fillings is because they don’t add any liquid to the recipe like the other fruit…so it makes the batter a bit dry. Adding raisins or cranberries is just like adding a handful of nuts. It doesn’t count towards the total 1 1/4 cup total filling. Thank you for pointing this out. As for your question about the juice, your goal is to get 1 1/4 cup of liquid, so add in other fillings as well as 1/3 cup of juice until you have a total of 1 1/4 cup of filling. You don’t want your muffins to be too wet. Good luck! I hope you enjoy this recipe and all the others.