Vegan Mofo V Day 3: Muffins are Tops!

I love muffins in the morning, but I don't want to wake up and make them. I want to wake up and eat them. The solution: bake your muffins at night. This goes double if you live in a warmer climate and it is too hot to have the oven during the day. Hopefully in the next few weeks the weather will become more oven-friendly, but we have a bit of summer left on the west side.

These are "Cranberry Burst Citrus Muffins" from Deer Run Bed & Breakfast in Big Pine Key, Fla. Have I ever stayed there? No. But through the magic of an issue of "Vegetarian Times" I can pretend I did. If can go anywhere when you read a book, surely you can reach destinations via magazines too, right? They ran a feature on b & b's last year and this was one of the many recipes I wanted to try.

Part of the charm of this recipe was that all I needed to buy was a few oranges. You need juice and zest. I got plenty of zest from one orange, but next time I think I will use even more since I love citrus. I had a bit more trouble juicing and had to use two to get 1/4 cup, but a more experienced person could probably get it from one. The oranges smelled so good I wished I had bought just one more to eat on its own.  For some odd reason, I almost never buy oranges, but if someone offers me one, I will gladly eat it.

Anyhow these turned out lovely and I would definitely make them again. Even though I love the orange and cranberry bits, my favorite part is probably the sugar sprinkled on top. It reminds me of bakery muffins I used to enjoy, but now I can have more of them for less money (and more exercising!).

Blueberry Bombs

We had a wonderful time celebrating my cousin's 50th birthday this weekend. It was especially great to reunite with some cousins I haven't seen since we were kids. We have plans to hang out soon so I am excited for that, hope we can keep it up. I think my cousin felt bad we couldn't eat any of the lovely cakes she made so she sent us home with the fruit that was also out with the desserts. There were cherries, green grapes, black grapes and blueberries.
I knew the others would get eaten up on their own but I wanted to do something with the berries. After looking through lots of cookbooks for a blueberry muffin recipe I decided on the "Blueberry Lemon Muffins" from The Joy of Vegan Baking. I'm really pleased with how they turned out. I might put a bit more lemon zest next time because we really like our lemon around here, but they are quite tasty as they are. I'm glad we're going to get a break in the weather this week but had I known that sooner, I probably wouldn't have made these yesterday. 400 degree oven and 90 degree weather, not the best idea.

Somebody Give This Guy A Muffin!

A banana surplus is not always a bad thing. If I didn't mess up and buy too many, there wouldn't be any banana chocolate chip muffins to welcome my niece and sister home after three weeks of house-sitting. I thought it would be a vacation for me and a test-run for them, but it wasn't what any of us thought it would be. My niece was still here a few days after school each week until my sister or her fiancé could collect her. I went to "their" house for dinner once each week, but it wasn't as good as at home. We complain about our kitchen being so small but it does have all the equipment we need (though there are a few things we still want of course). I think my favorite part of the visit was not having to clean up afterward.

Anyway, back to the muffins. I was going to wait for the others, but just couldn't. They turned out lovely. I really do need to get an oven thermometer before the holidays though. The baking time was 20-30 minutes so I set my timer for 20. Somewhere between 10 and 15 it started to smell like they might be burning so I opened the oven to find out they were indeed done, and a few overdone. Not a big deal, just penciled a note about the time in my book and put the toastier ones aside. I enjoy food just on the edge of burned, but I wouldn't serve it to anyone else.

Tricky oven aside, it was a great recipe from The Joy Of Vegan Baking by Collen Patrick-Goudreau. I love her recipes and I am still mad at myself that I lost the library's copy of The Vegan Table before I could even get a good look at it. I'm hoping to find it somewhere in this house. I already bought a replacement copy for the library, so if I find the old one it's mine to keep.