Whole-Wheat Blueberry Muffins

Tags

blueberry, egg-free, muffins, whole-wheat flour

Three muffin recipes in a row. What can I say… I love muffins! Before I made these muffins, I planned on making a different muffin recipe. It still had cinnamon and blueberries, but I ran into one problem… I didn’t have enough all-purpose flour!! How is that even possible!! Has that ever happened to you? So off to the internet and my google reader where I was so happy to find a recipe using blueberries and used ALL whole-wheat flour.I’ve always heard that it’s okay to use half all-purpose and half whole-wheat flour, but to never fully substitute with whole-wheat. Leave it to King Arthur flour to come up with a recipe that successfully uses all whole-wheat flour and saves the day! So I was off to work again making these delicious muffins to bring to my parents as a snack while I was dog/house sitting. My mom loved these so much that I made her 2 batches while she was gone and froze them for a quick breakfast whenever she wants. It’s no wonder she loves me! 😉 And besides being healthy since they’re made with whole-wheat flour, they are also egg-free which makes them a perfect treat, especially for friends with an egg allergy!One Year Ago: Zucchini-Pineapple Cupcakes with Lemon Sour Cream Frosting and Oreo Cream Cheese Swirl Brownies

Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins
Yield: 12 muffins

Muffins:
2¼ cups whole wheat flour
1 cup brown sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1½ cups blueberries, fresh or frozen
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
⅓ cup vegetable oil
1½ cups buttermilk

Topping:
½ cup packed brown sugar
⅓ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 tablespoons butter, melted

To make the topping: Stir together brown sugar, flour, rolled oats, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Drizzle in the melted butter, mixing until well blended.

To make the muffins: Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a muffin tin with paper baking cups; set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together all of the dry ingredients, including the blueberries; set aside.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the vanilla, vegetable oil, and buttermilk. Pour the bowl of liquids into the dry ingredients, stirring just to combine. Divide the batter evenly among the 12 prepared muffin cups; cups will be overly full. Sprinkle with cinnamon-oat topping.

Bake the muffins for 18 to 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the muffins come out clean. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and cool 5 minutes, then remove the muffins and finish cooling on the rack. Serve warm or at room temperature. Store leftovers loosely wrapped at room temperature.

Source: Adapted from King Arthur Flour via Sweet Pea’s Kitchen

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Blueberry Breakfast Cake

Tags

blueberry, buttermilk, cake, lemon, muffins

Breakfast. Cake. Could life be any better? 🙂 This is the best excuse ever to eat cake for breakfast! I mean, it’s all right there in the title… If it makes you feel any better, it’s like eating a blueberry muffin. It’s just cut into squares like cake. And has a tender crumb, like cake. But it’s not overly sweet like cake, so therefore it’s a perfect breakfast cake or snack cake. Sorry, I just said cake so many times! This is really delicious, though. Plump blueberries bursting in every bite, with a slight tang from the lemon and buttermilk. So good, and such a pretty breakfast cake. 🙂 Hurry and take advantage while blueberries are still in season!

One Year Ago: Skillet Lasagna and Garlic Rice Pilaf

Blueberry Breakfast Cake

½ cup butter, at room temperature
2 teaspoons lemon zest
¾ cup + 1 tablespoons sugar, divided
1 egg, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups flour, divided
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 cups fresh blueberries
½ cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 9×9-inch pan with cooking spray; set aside. Toss the blueberries with ¼ cup flour; set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the remaining flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter, lemon zest and ¾ cup sugar together; beat until creamy and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla; beat just until combined. Slowly add the flour mixture, alternating with the buttermilk. Mix until just combined, then gently fold in the blueberries and any loose flour. Batter will be thick.

Spread batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of sugar evenly over the top of batter. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cool 15 minutes before serving.

Source: Slightly adapted from Life as a Lofthouse

 

Blueberry and Cream Cheese Filled King Cake

Tags

blueberry, cake, Carnival, cream cheese, King Cake, Mardi Gras

Happy Mardi Gras!

In celebration of Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday), I made a King Cake! It’s flavor is hard to describe, though wikipedia describes it as a sort of danish. It’s a yeast bread, filled, made into a ring, and covered with a glaze and colored sugars. Being a yeast bread and kind of like a danish makes it a suitable breakfast or dessert in my books! 🙂 Mine didn’t come out as pretty as I hoped, but at least it tasted awesome! For those of you who don’t know, King Cake is part of the tradition of Mardi Gras and Carnival. A fun and festive cake for a fun and festive celebration! In New Orleans, Mardi Gras is full of floats, parades, masquerades, drunken celebration, beads, and coins. Fat Tuesdays refers to the last day before Ash Wednesday and before lent begins, when you can indulge yourself to your hearts content!I’ve been to Mardi Gras once, and I was definitely too young to appreciate it. As in, it actually kind of scared me! I wasn’t a huge fan of crowds, fireworks, loud noises… totally not a good thing in New Orleans around Mardi Gras. My family and I were in town for a family wedding, so might as well celebrate while we’re there, right? So many colors, beads, floats, and people! I at least enjoyed collecting beads from each float. I would love to go back now that I’m older, and can actually drink now (and my childhood fears have gone away)!

Ever since we went, we started ordering a King Cake each year at Mardi Gras. Per our own family tradition, we would order the cream cheese-blueberry filled. It was beautiful, huge, and so delicious! Unfortunately, they started getting to expensive to ship from Louisiana out to California, so we started going without our annual King Cake. Once I went to college, I really started getting into baking and decided to try making a King Cake for the first time. It turned out great, and the shape and everything about it was just perfect.

My very first homemade King Cake, from the college days!

But stupid me… I didn’t save the recipe and the site has long since disappeared. The recipe below is the one I’ve used twice now. The flavor tastes just like I remember, and though I kind of make a mess with the blueberry filling, each year it seems to come out better. This year, it rose a lot and blobbed out, so I decided that next year I’ll make the cake rolls more narrow and longer, which I reflected in the recipe. So, sorry this post was longer than usual, but I hope you have a wonderful Mardi Gras! Throw me some beads, mister! 🙂

Blueberry and Cream Cheese Filled King Cake

Cake:
1 (16-ounce) container sour cream
⅓ cup sugar
¼ cup butter
1 teaspoon salt
2 (¼-ounce) envelopes active dry yeast
½ cup warm water (100° to 110°)
1 tablespoon sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
6 to 6½ cups all-purpose flour

Fillings:
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon milk
1 cup blueberry pie filling, slightly mashed

Glaze:
3 cups powdered sugar
3 tablespoons butter, melted
2 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
2 to 4 tablespoons milk

Colored Sugar Topping:
1½ cups granulated sugar, divided
Food coloring (red, blue, green, yellow)

To make the cake: In a medium saucepan over low heat, combine sour cream, ⅓ cup sugar, butter, and salt. Cook until butter melts, stirring often. Set aside, and cool mixture to 100-110 degrees F.

In a 1-cup measuring cup, stir together yeast, warm water, and 1 tablespoon sugar; let stand 5 minutes.

In the mixing bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat sour cream mixture, yeast mixture, eggs, and 2 cups flour at medium speed until smooth. Reduce speed to low, and gradually add 4 to 4½ cups flour until a soft dough forms. Change to the dough hook and knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Form dough into a ball and place in a well greased bowl, turning the dough to grease all sides. Cover and let rise in a warm place, free from drafts, 1 hour or until dough is doubled in bulk.

To make cream cheese filling: In a medium bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth. Add powdered sugar, flour, vanilla, and milk and beat until creamy and smooth; set aside.

To make the glaze: In a medium bowl, combine powdered sugar, butter, lemon juice, vanilla, and 2 tablespoons milk. Stir until smooth, adding additional milk 1 teaspoon at a time, until pouring consistency.

To make the colored sugars: Pour ½ cup sugar into 3 separate sealable sandwich bags. Add 3 to 5 drops of food coloring to separate bags, adding red and blue to the same bag to make purple. Seal the bags and shake to distribute the color, using your fingers to break up any colored clumps of sugar; set aside.

To assemble: Punch down dough, and divide in half. Roll each portion into a 30 x 9-inch rectangle. On one rectangle, spread the cream cheese filling, leaving a 1-inch border. One the other rectangle, spread the blueberry filling, leaving a 1-inch border. Roll up each dough rectangle, jelly-roll fashion, starting at 1 long side. Place dough rolls, seam side down, on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bring ends of both rolls together, and twist the two rolls to form a spiral. Shape the spiral into an oval ring, moistening and pinching edges together to seal. Cover and let rise in a warm place, free from drafts, 20 to 30 minutes or until doubled in bulk.

Bake at 375 degrees F for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden. Slightly cool cake on the pan on a wire rack, about 10 minutes. Drizzle glaze evenly over warm cake; sprinkle with colored sugars, alternating colors and forming bands. Let cool completely before serving.

Source: Cake adapted from Southern Living, everything else from a source long since lost and forgotten!

Blueberry Sour Cream Pie

Tags

blueberry, pie

Up in the foothills, on my way to and from work, I pass fruit stands that sell fruit, as well as delicious pies. There is one place in particular that looks like a large barn surrounded by vineyards and orchards, and they have amazing pies. Between my best friend and myself, we’ve tried strawberry-rhubarb, peach-blueberry, strawberry cream cheese, and boysenberry sour cream. They have all been delicious, and I hope to be able to replicate some of the recipes soon.

My search began with sour cream pies. They are creamy, yet almost like a custard in texture. It is a very unique pie, indeed. In my searches, I found two different recipes to try. One of them was a strawberry sour cream pie. It looked pretty, but the flavor wasn’t all that great. Since then, I have found a blueberry sour cream pie that is very tasty. It’s not quite comparable, but it satisfies the craving while I search for a closer match. Any fruit can be substituted, but my guess is that fresh fruit would work the best. If you’re interested in trying a unique pie, give a sour cream pie a taste!

On a side note, I’m still searching for the perfect pie crust. I’ve tried a couple that are satisfactory, but nothing great. The one I tried with this pie has been my favorite yet, as it is a little flaky and a little crumbly, but it’s still missing a little something. Feel free to use your own favorite pie crust or a store bought pie crust.Blueberry Sour Cream Pie

1 pie crust, baked
1 cup sour cream
¾ cup sugar, plus 1 tablespoon
2½ tablespoons all purpose flour
1 egg, beaten to blend
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon salt
2½ cups fresh blueberries

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

In a medium bowl, combine sour cream, ¾ cup sugar, flour, egg, vanilla extract, and salt. Gently fold in the blueberries. Pour into prepared pie crust. Sprinkle the top with 1 tablespoon sugar. Bake until filling is set and top is lightly browned, about 25 minutes, covering crust to prevent over browning if needed. Let pie cool completely before cutting and serving.

Source: Bon Appetit Desserts