Apricot Almond Muffins
Kirby went skiing today and I have a staff meeting on Monday that I wanted to bring snacks to so I found a new muffin recipe I thought I’d try. It’s been a while since I did a food blog so I thought I’d take a moment and write this one up.
The recipe I decided to make was for Apricot Almond Muffins (found here). I made two batches for several reasons. The first is because whenever I make a recipe for the first time I always try and do a trial run so that I can make any necessary adjustments in the second try to make sure I get at least one good batch. The second reason is because I hate it when my baked goods are over cooked, so I like to bake things for the amount of time the original recipes calls for and then adjust the second time around if needed (I had to shave 2 minutes off on my second batch).
The third reason I made two batches is because lately I’ve been getting a lot of sass from the maid. Something about how he only ever gets to eat out of the “reject pile” of baked goods. So now when I make a recipe that only yields a dozen or so, I always make two batches. Lord knows you don’t want a disgruntled maid to go on strike or something.
I love cooking when no one is in the house because then I get to take over the kitchen and crank my music.
I started by chopping up my apricots in to raisin sized pieces. The recipe calls for apricots and raisins but we aren’t big on raisins around here, so I just increased the apricot portion.
Next I mixed two cups of flour with 1 tablespoon of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda and 1/4 teaspoon of salt and set aside. In a separate bowl I mixed 1 egg, 1 cup of buttermilk, 2/3 cup of brown sugar, 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla, 1/2 a cup of melted butter and 3/4 cup of chopped apricots.
I melted my butter on the stove earlier and even though it had cooled for a while, as soon as it was added to the cold buttermilk it immediately congealed and made my batter very lumpy.
This is when I said “Aha! This is why I make two recipes.” But some times baking can be forgiving, so I stirred the wet ingredients in to the dry, spread in to a lined muffin pan and sprinkled them with almonds.
I baked them at 400 degrees F for 18 minutes and they were definitely a little over cooked. So when I made the second batch, I made a few adjustments. I started by setting aside the 1 cup of buttermilk to try and get it to room temperature. I also used vegetable oil instead of melted butter and I adjusted the baking time to 16 minutes. The batter came out a lot smoother.
And the muffins came out really nice.
So ya, I’m pretty pleased with this recipe and I think it’ll get added to the muffin rotation.
Blog credits:
The cast of tonight’s blog has been:
Kirby (AKA the maid who went skiing).
gabandkirby 