Mmm-mm - carrot muffins

Glenn and I think these are one of the better muffins I've ever made. I found the recipe for Super Moist 3 Bowl not-too-sweet-Carrot Cake/Muffins on the internet, but made half the amount. The half-recipe made 8 muffins.

CARROT MUFFINS

Use 3 medium bowls to mix. I used a spoon for mixing all muffin ingredients.

Preheat oven to 150° C, the recipe says. Since I wasn't sure what that converted to in Fahrenheit, I used 350° F. It should have been about 300° F but 350° worked fine.

Ingredients for half recipe

In bowl ONE mix:

1 1/2 cups finely grated carrots

3/4 cup chopped pecans (I prefer pecans over walnuts)

1/2 cup of raisins (I soak them a bit first)

In bowl TWO mix:

1 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon or so ground cinnamon (recipe calls for 1 1/4 teaspoon but I erred on the side of caution)

In bowl THREE mix:

3/4 cup of sugar

1/2 + 1/8 cup oil (they use olive oil; I used canola - I might try a bit less next time)

Then add:

2 large eggs, one at a time, mixing for about 30 seconds each

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla (recipe doesn’t actually say when to add vanilla so I put it in here)

Now add flour mixture from bowl TWO to oil mixture in bowl THREE. Stir until blended.

Finally add carrot mixture from bowl ONE into this and mix until blended (though it’s probably important not to over mix).

Divide the batter into the muffin tins, or pour into a cake pan if you'd rather make a cake. I use paper muffin cups in the muffin tin rather than greasing and flouring the pan.

Bake muffins until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Mine took about 25 minutes at 350° F.

Cool muffins in the pans for at least 15 minutes. Turn out onto racks and cool. (I was eating one 5 minutes after it came out of the oven.) If you want, you can add a cream cheese icing. I'll look up the recipe for that later, but believe it was a beaten mixture of 1/4 cup cream cheese, 1 or 2 tablespoons softened butter, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and a cup or more of icing sugar. Next time I'll try half the amount.

Putting less batter in the cup seemed to result in the nicer shaped muffin on the right. Or maybe it was because that batch of dough was refrigerated as the first batch baked.

Interlude - recent baking

Left: My basic white bread has been turning out better than ever lately. If only I knew why.
Right: Light wheat rolls are the first thing I've ever made using whole wheat flour that turned out okay. Thanks 'S' for the recipe.

This recipe for buttermilk bread came from the Pillsbury cookbook. For some reason it's made with two pieces of rolled dough placed side by side in the pan. I named this 'bum bread' because of its appearance while baking in the oven. Quite good - the inside remains soft and chewy even when a slice is toasted.

Another recipe from the Pillsbury book - Quick Sourdough French Bread made with sour cream and a surprising ingredient - a bit of ginger. Glenn doesn't like sourdough bread but he likes this, especially the crust.

Blueberries were on sale so I decided to make two types of lemon blueberry muffins.

Left: with yogurt.

Right: with buttermilk, a bit more sugar, and crushed as well as whole blueberries. And the winner by a nose is, oddly, the lousier looking ones on the right. They're slightly sweeter and we like the crust on them best. But both kinds are good.