Cinnamon Sugar Apple Donut Muffins

Now that’s a mouthful.  A delicious mouthful. 

The recipe is actually called caramel apple donut muffins but I left out the caramel.  I know, I know. I love caramel but they were so good without the caramel I was afraid to mess with the good I already had. :)

 

I found the recipe on a blog called Willow Bird Baking.  Julie made an assortment of donut muffins.  She had powdered sugar donut muffins, chocolate dipped with sprinkles ones, jelly filled, and the caramel apple.  They all look great but I had to go with cinnamon and caramel.  My kids loved these and gobbled up in no time.  The only thing I would do differently next time is to add more apple.  My apple was a bit small so I’d use a nice big one or two small ones.  Happy Apple Baking!  :)

Cinnamon Sugar Apple Donut Muffins, adapted from Willow Bird Baking 

Batter Ingredients:

3/4 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp baking power

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup milk (low fat is fine)

1 tsp vanilla extract 

4 tablespoons melted butter, for dipping

1/2 cup sugar mixed with 1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 apple, peeled and diced (I used a Granny Smith)

Directions:
Prepare two mini-muffin pans by spraying with cooking spray.* Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.   Beat sugar and egg together in a large bowl until fluffy. In a smaller bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg. Pour dry ingredients into wet ingredients and stir until combined. Add vegetable oil, milk, vanilla extract and mix.   Stir in apples.

Pour batter into prepared muffin tins, filling each about 3/4 full. Bake for 13-15 minutes until tester comes out clean.  Remove from oven and let cool in the pan for a few minutes before removing onto a cooling rack (if muffins are extremely delicate and difficult to remove, you may need to bake them a minute longer.) While the muffins are cooling melt the butter in the microwave and mix the cinnamon and sugar in a separate bowl. When the muffins are cool enough to handle, dunk the tops into the melted butter and then into the cinnamon-sugar mixture.

*I made 24 mini donut muffins and 6 regular sized ones.  You can make 36 minis or 18 regular size ones.  For the printable recipe I used click here.

Calling All Banana Lovers!

Oh, my goodness have I got a banana recipe for you!  Banana beignets.  Ever heard of them?  I hadn’t until  Maranda at Jolts & Jollies made them and then I couldn’t stop thinking about them.  I never blog about a recipe the same day I make  it but these, oh, I couldn’t keep these from you a moment longer. I also wanna apologize for the less than stellar photos but I had the kids gathered around me wanting to eat them hot and I’m still trying to figure out my camera’s manual setting.

A coupla notes about the recipe.  Besides being insanely delicious(the beignets)  the batter is super easy to make.  BUT I’m not gonna lie, I needed another pair of hands once I started frying. You could go it alone but I found things went smoother once I called in reinforcements.  Another thing, your first coupla beignets aren’t going to look like much but that’s okay ‘cause they’re gonna taste just as good as the pretty ones.  The pretty ones?  Those will be the last few batches you make as you get the hang of things.  The recipe called for rolling the beignets in cinnamon sugar but  I only did half of them and used powdered sugar on the other half.  (The kids were all over the powdered sugar ones.)  Almost done and I’ll let you can get to makin’ these for yourself.  The recipe calls for banana extract.  If you have it, use it and really kick up the banana goodness!  :)

Click here for a printable recipe.

Soft Pretzels

Last year Monica and I baked together quite a few times.  Our adventures in baking were cupcakes out of Martha Stewart’s Cupcake cookbook.  This year we stepped it and dragged along Michelle from One Ordinary Day. Over the next year we hope to conquer our fears and expand our baking horizons. 

Michelle chose soft pretzels as our first challenge.  Knowing I was baking with these two awesome bakers and bloggers gave me the push I needed to give these a try!  (FYI, I first drooled over pretzels after seeing Ann’s at Household 6 Diva!) Michelle chose Alton Brown’s recipe which she saw made here on Macheesmo.

Unfortunately my photos don’t really do the pretzels justice but the good news is you can check out Michelle’s and Monica’s pretzels which are sure to be stellar. 

I opted to make all my pretzels cinnamon sugar ones. You’re shocked right?  :)

I hope that we’ve motivated you to try your hand at making pretzels.  The recipe is straight forward and the dough isn’t too difficult to work with, just remember to have everything in place.

 ***Click here for the printable recipe I used!***

Snickerdoodle Bundt Cake

If you've read my blog or just skimmed through, you'll have noticed a couple of things. I love snickerdoodle and s'mores "flavored" desserts.  Well, on Monday I click over to see what Cristine had posted on her blog, Cooking with Cristine and what do I see but my family's favorite, Snickerdoodle Blondies.  I immediately read on to see if she enjoyed them as much as I do.  She does!  Here's what she wrote...."They are divine, amazing, fantastic, drool-worthy, delicious.... well, you get the point!"  Yay, I don't know about you guys but I always worry about posting how fantastic I think something is only to later find out that everyone else who tried it hated it! 

Getting back to the cake.  There I am happily leaving Cristine a comment when I noticed that Julia had also  left her a comment.  I stop a moment to read what Julia wrote and what do my eyes see?  Julia has written about a Snickerdoodle Cake she has just made!   Whaaaaa?!  Since when?  And how come she didn't tell me, her most faithful snickerdoodle follower?  I hurriedly finished up my comment and hopped over to see what this was all about.  Yup, there it was Snickerdoodle Bundt Cake.  ( I should state that Peabody has a Snickerdoodle Cake which I have made before and is excellent but these two cakes are poles apart.)  Well, I didn't need to read further than the title or even see the photos to know I was making this cake.  As a matter of fact I was making it that very day.  It didn't matter that I had already committed myself to baking an entirely different cake I WAS eating Snickerdoodle Bundt Cake!  

I sincerely wish that I could say that this cake was as good as I thought it was going to be but unfortunately, it was BETTER!  Better than I thought, than my children thought, so good in fact, Miss Karolyn (the sitter and my some time dessert photographer) is baking one up at her house as I type this! 

The wonderful aroma my oven was putting out was so intoxicating that as soon as I tipped the cake out of the pan and took some photos we each dug into a warm piece.  Joe ate his piece under some vanilla ice cream and the rest of us except for Devon enjoyed our piece with a glass of milk!  Oh, and the crust, oh man, I could have easily taken the crust off the whole thing and eaten just it!  Forget Snickerdoodle Blondies, make Snickerdoodle Bundt Cake instead!

I followed the recipe but made one tiny change, for part of the swirl and topping I added cinnamon chips (in the above photo the "hole" is where there was some cinnamon chips)  I added them to a quarter of the cake.  Next time I'm adding a heavy layer of them and toasted nuts to both the swirl and the top which is the bottom once it is flipped out of the pan.

Julia the consensus is that Snickerdoodle Bundt Cake is our new favorite with the Snickerdoodle Blondies a close second!

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