Whole Wheat Muffins Marbled With Ginger Orange Raisin Puree & Topped With Orange Icing

Several weeks ago, I posted about preserving a huge quantity of raisins close to their due date by making a puree. A small batch was done separately, one spiced with ginger and enlivened with orange juice which I envisoned would eventually marble whole wheat muffins. The vision has been realised and here they are! And they are beyond fabulous, fluffy, rich with egg, butter, and milk, sweetened with maple sugar and the oh so tasty ginger orange raisin puree, not to mention the extra oomph of orange icing.

Ingredients

makes ten (batter filled to the brim which is my preference) to twelve muffins (batter filled 3/4 to the brim)

• Flour, whole wheat, 240 g (2 American 8 fluid oz cups)
• Sugar, 100 g ( 1/2 American 8 fluid oz cup/8 T)
• Sugar, brown, (1/2 American 8 fluid oz cup/8T) or in my case stir in 1.5 tsp of maple syrup into white sugar
• Baking soda, 1 tsp
• Egg, l
• Vanilla extract, 1/4 tsp
• Milk, whole, 1 American 8 fluid oz cup/16 T)
• Orange ginger raisin puree, 4 T (recipe is here)
• Orange juice and icing sugar depending on the amount and consistency of the finished icing (I use 3 T of juice to about 9 T of confectioner's sugar)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Liberally brush a 12 muffin tin pan with butter, making sure each well is well doused along with a bit just outside their perimeters. 

If opting for maple sugar instead of brown sugar, stir in 1.5 T of maple syrup to 1/2 cup of sugar and reserve.

Using either an electric aid (in my case, a stick mixer) or elbow grease, cream butter, sugars, and baking soda until resembling mashed potatoes.

In a separate small bowl beat the egg with the vanilla and add to creamed mixture. Beat in the milk, and then gradually the flour until it is all barely incorporated. It's time to fill the muffin tins.

Fill the tin 1/4 the way and drop about 3 to 4 small amounts of the raisin puree. Repeat until the well is either 3/4 filled or in my preference, to the brim.

With a wooden skewer inserted right to the bottom of a well, swirl the batter, Turn the pan a quarter, and repeat.

Bake around 17 minutes or until centres are springy to the touch and/or a skewer is inserted and comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for a minute or two and then work carefully around each well with a butter knife. Turn the pan over and gently shake out the muffins. Let cool.

For the icing start with one tablespoon of orange juice and add enough icing sugar to get the consistency desired. The topping can be quite thick where it is spread on or it can be close to watery so it soaks into the muffin which is what I did.

Best whole wheat muffin ever! It's quite sweet, so besides gracing the breakfast/snack table, it would do just as well if served for dessert. The surplus chez nous was frozen and I can't wait to eat one of these soooooooooooon. Egads, they are DELICIOUS.

À la prochaine!

Blueberry Cake Muffins

The fable of the blueberry cake muffin is thusly told. Eons ago, when they lived in another place, one of oversized meals, twelve-lane highways, and a sun that hardly quit, they found a blueberry muffin they both adored. It was not like all the others as it was really butter cake studded with blueberries stuck in a muffin tin. As it was their wont, they moved, moved again, and yet again until they were so far away from their beloved bakery they began to think perhaps that perfect blueberry muffin was the stuff of dreams. They shopped around, tried recipes, all in vain, and they continued being bereft. Until now. As a promising recipe worked out. Finally!

Now there are easier muffins because cake muffins require creaming butter and sugar, but if you have a stand mixer, it will be less difficult. I managed without one. (Question. Why aren't these called blueberry cupcakes instead of blueberry cake muffins? Is there an invisible muffin monster in everybody's oven that's going to pop out and scream, MUFFIN, NOT CUPCAKE?) Obstacles other than lack of an appropriate recipe were my aversion to muffin tin liners and our potted blueberry bushes not yielding enough fruit until this season. The variety is Patriot, and it is an early cropper hence blueberries in June. It takes several years to become productive, but when it does, wow!

And the liners are homemade from parchment paper so just the needed number was made from material already in the house. All problems solved. Well, there was a pesky one remaining of how to prevent berries from migrating en mass to the bottom. Placing first a layer of batter without blueberries worked fairly well. The well known technique of flouring berries does lessen bleeding, but not their settling to the bottom. I love the bursting of their skins, but not so much their simulating yogurt with all the fruit way down below. Yogurt can be stirred, but not muffins, anyway not in the universe I happen to inhabit. If you do not share my love of burst berries marbling the muffin purple, then flour them using some from the amount already measured for the recipe.

Ingredients
makes 12 muffins 3.8cm (1.5in) deep by 7.6cm (3in) wide
adapted from Better Baking Bible

1. Butter, sweet, softened, 8 T
2. Sugar, white, 8 T
3. Eggs, large, 2
4. Vanilla extract, 1 tsp
5. Baking powder, 2 tsp
6. Salt, 1/2 tsp
7. Flour, white, all-purpose, plain, 475 ml (two 8 fluid oz cups)
8. Milk, whole, 8 T
9. Blueberries, fresh or frozen, 355 ml (2 1/2 fluid oz cups)

If there are no muffin liners chez vous but there's parchment paper handy, then this is how to make them.* Find a small bottle or round container with a bottom that fits easily into a muffin tin. Cut  parchment paper into the necessary number of 12.7cm (5in) squares. Centre the paper square over the bottom of the upturned bottle and using both hands squish down the paper over the bottle, roughly pleating the paper and creasing around the round contours. Put a dot of oil or a smear of butter in each muffin tin and position the liner. If there are no liners or parchment paper nearby, then butter the tins well, especially where the sides meet the bottom and flour lightly.

The night before leave out measured milk, butter (cover both), and yet-to-be-cracked eggs so they all will be at room temperature next morning OR depending on ambient temperature, only a couple of hours may be called for as during the summer or in an overly heated room. Be sure that the muffin tin is prepared, with store-bought/homemade (see above for instructions) liners or buttered and floured. 

Preheat oven to 190 degrees C (375 degrees F). Put the softened butter into a large mixing bowl or a stand mixer's container. If a stand mixer is not available, using the back of a large wooden spoon, smash/rub/work the sugar into the butter. Don't stir at first, but as the sugar-butter mixture gets fluffy, increases in volume, and becomes lighter in colour, a judicious stir here and there is fine. When necessary, scrape the mixture off the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Creaming should take around ten minutes. Add the eggs one by one, whisking after each addition. Stir in the vanilla, baking powder, and salt. Alternating between milk and flour, add a half of each. Mix until blended. Repeat with the remaining milk and flour. After putting a layer of batter in each tin, use the back of a teaspoon dipped in cold water to even it out.

Now fold the blueberries into the remaining batter.

Fill as close to the brim as possible.

Bake for twenty minutes or until golden and when a skewer is inserted, it comes out clean. The top of the muffin should also bounce back a bit if tapped. The homemade liners act like handles so the muffins can be lifted out while still hot. When they cooled a bit, they were separated from the liners and put on a wire rack until they were at room temperature.

The story turns out to be happily ever after. That perfect muffin in California inspired me through the decades of never giving up so we eventually could gobble up a similar muffin in France! I love the sparse fluting around the sides left by the liners. Since they freeze well, some were popped into the freezer. As good as these are, they actually get better once frozen and thawed to room temperature as the texture becomes even more lusciously moist. Thawed, but still cold muffins, can be split, lightly buttered, and toasted under the broiler.

Most of the berries stayed put and did not sink except for a rebel or two determined to be bottom dwellers.

The Calm One announced them to be fine. Translation from one who mostly moves in neutral gear, to my language, who is usually running at top emotional speed: they are stupendous.

À la prochaine!

RELATED LINKS

Full instructions for making cupcake/muffin liners