You know what the best thing about turkey dinner is? Left-overs. I'm sure you've probably read countless blogs about how to use various pieces of the dinner as left-overs (Turkey crispy bits as a salad topper? Thank goodness we have Jamie Oliver hanging around, eh?) No doubt you've gotten some great ideas, but I don't have a "left-overs" story for meat for you, or for any of the vegetable dishes. Admittedly, I'm not even remotely half the chef that my mum or aunt are. However, they've had more practice than me.
Anyway, one of our family holiday traditions is to visit with my family for Christmas day. For us, this means traveling a great distance to my aunt's house to enjoy the holidays to the full extent in the only way we know how; through the sharing of awesome eats, tasty alcoholic beverages and assorted desserts. The last few years, I have baked a cake to take along but, this year, I totally slacked off! My mother, however, prepared an epic fruit plate of epic-ness. It had cantaloupe, grapes (red and green), strawberries, blackberries and blueberries.
Even afterward, we still had left-overs of the various fruits. I think we still even have a cantaloupe kicking it in the bag in our fridge. The berries, however, were staring me straight in the face, day after day.
"Eat me!" They cried desperately from their little plastic prisons.
"But I want an apple!" I replied in return, reaching for the fruit drawer instead.
"Bah, you are no use to us!"
Oh, but I am, you see, because I know of this thing called the internet and how to use it to find recipes. So I used this massive well of information to find me a muffin recipe. I don't usually make muffins, but I couldn't think of a better way to use assorted berries. So, I found a recipe for fruit and jam muffins on Joy's blog after a little bit of searching. (Her header, upon posting this, was *so* cute! And her kitten... You can't see right now, but I'm having small cuteness-overload attacks! ^___^).
Anyway, I had to meet a friend of mine in the afternoon as well as having the need to bake something. He's been down lately so I wanted to give him something to enjoy while taking care of the hard stuff. Call this my attempt at comfort food (although, because it has fruit, does it count?).
These muffins came out soft and the fruit stayed very nicely in the batter. Plus, I got the opportunity to use my new hand-mixer (Christmas present!) just because I could. Oh, the wonders of more modern baking technology!
Joy's Just-About-Anything Muffins
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| Hey there, I'm a crumble-topped muffin filled with fresh fruits of various shapes and colors. Won't you please have a bite of me? I'm even good with some coffee in the morning while you're doing Sudoku! |
What You'll Need:
For the Muff:
- 6 Tbsp unsalted butter* (This is about 1/3 cup plus a little bit. If you want to be conversionally correct, 6 Tbsp is equal to 37/100 or 0.37 cups. So, I eyeballed.)
- 1/3 skim milk
- 1 large egg
- 1 egg yolk (Admittedly, isolating a yolk is tricky business. Don't be afraid to break the yolk though! I've found that the more fear you take into the task, the more broken yolks you end up with. Besides all that, if you break the darn thing, just grab another egg. Who's going to know that you broke the first one unless you tell 'em? Right?)
- 3/4 tsp vanilla extract (Artificial this time, my pure VE was at home...)
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I sifted it. I know you don't have to, but I like the assurance of no packaged clumps.)
- 3/4 cup white sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 3/4 tsp salt*
- 1 cup of fresh fruit (My mum made a fruit platter for my aunt's Christmas Day dinner and we had some left-over berries that no one had touched. It was strange, though, because they spontaneously disappeared from the fridge. Well, with the exception of a handful of blueberries anyway!)
- 3 Tbsp jam (I raided the cellar and found glass jars full of my mom's strawberry preserves. Jarred strawberry, ftw!)
For the crumbly topping:
- 3 Tbsp unsalted butter*
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 3 1/2 Tbsp sugar
*In making these, I skipped the salt. Good reason lead to this because I could only get my eager hands on salted butter. It happens sometimes.
How It's Done:
- Get a rack in the upper third of the oven.
- Preheat your oven to 375F.
- Muffin-cup up your pan for the dozen. (Alternatively, you can also use those silicon liners or butter/flour the pan. I think this is a more "your choice" deal. Well, I really should say, "Your domain, your decisions"! ^_^)
- Melt the butter in dish. (I used the microwave at my mom's place, but I usually do this over simmering water because I like the control you get there. Who's a control freak? ME! I have my flaws, 'nuff said.)
- Whisk together all the dry junk (flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt).
- To the melted butter, add in the milk, whole egg, egg yolk, and vanilla. (I would suggest that your milk is near room temperature, otherwise, I think that the butter will probably get all solid and kind of curded. This happened to me and they still turned out okay, but I might try room temperature milk next time.)
- Add the flour mixture (dry) to the wet ingredients until just combined.
- Fold in your fruit and jam.
- Make the topping by combining all the topping ingredients and crumble together with your hands. (Pretty much my favorite step of the whole recipe. It's like being in preschool all over again.)
- Bake in the oven until golden and the muffin of your choice (or many of your choices) pass the toothpick test. This is approximately 18-24 minutes. (For childhood-faithful, i.e. mum's oven, these babies took 24 minutes, but it might vary. Oo, especially if you have one of those swanky ovens where you digitally set the temperature. I, on the other hand, only have a dial divisioned by 50 degrees).
- When they're done, yank 'em out of the oven and then let them cool in the pan. When you're feeling good about the temperature, pull them out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Makes 12 tasty muffins.
These muffins were possible because of Joy The Baker's recipe for Raspberry and Jam Muffins. Aside from the butter connundrum (my bad!), the recipe featured there turned out to be wicked!
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