Glorious Morning Muffins.

When my husband and I first moved to Lincoln, we discovered that there is a fabulous farmers market here. (There's actually several, but we didn't know that at the time...) One of the things I looked forward to the most, besides the delicious fresh produce, and the honey, was this one particular muffin sold by a local smoothie shop stand. They called theirs the Morning Glory muffin, and I would purposely avoid eating breakfast so that I could enjoy this muffin that was the size of two normal muffins. Filled with carrots, walnuts, apples, coconut, and raisins, it also tasted healthy, if a bit rich. Here's the problem though. The farmers market ends in October, every year. Yes, I could drive down to the smoothie shop, but I never really want smoothies mid-winter, while I often desperately want these muffins.

Enter my bag of flour. Awhile ago I remember reading that I should check out the recipes included on the bags and cans and boxes that I buy. Many are gems, and they just get thrown away! This particular recipe came on the back of my Gold Medal Flour bag, along with another recipe, of which I have no recollection. This recipe eclipsed it in awesomeness. 

I now make these muffins somewhat regularly, though still not quite often enough, and I try to keep a few on hand for market mornings. Usually though, unless I hide them, all 18 are gone before I can set those few aside. Oh well, they're delicious. I can always make another batch.

Glorious Morning Muffins, from Gold Medal Flour

Ingredients:

2 eggs

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup milk

2 t vanilla

2 cups (Gold Medal) unbleached flour

1 cup packed brown sugar

2 t baking soda

2 t ground cinnamon

1/2 t salt

1 1/2 cups shredded carrots (2 to 3 medium)

1 cup shredded peeled apple (I don't always peel it)

1/2 cup coconut

1/2 cup raisins

3/4 cup sliced almonds (we prefer walnuts, so I used those)

Directions:

Heat oven to 350ºF. Place paper baking cup in each of 18 regular-size muffin cups, or grease with shortening or cooking spray (or butter!). 

In a large bowl, beat eggs, oil, milk and vanilla with wire whisk until well blended. Add flour, brown sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; stir just until dry ingredients are moistened. Stir in carrots, apple, coconut, raisins and 1/2 cup of the almonds. (Or all of the nuts...I don't bother saving any for garnish.)

Divide batter evenly among muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Sprinkle remaining 1/4 cup almonds over batter.

Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes; remove from pan. (I removed them almost immediately with a spatula with no ill effect, but be careful, they may stick.)

Makes 18 muffins. Enjoy!

Lemon Poppyseed Shortbread Cookies.

This cookie recipe could possibly be the easiest recipe I've made yet. Three ingredients before the customization, and a short baking time until nearly instant gratification. Also, this are one of the few cookie recipes I know of where the baked cookies tastes better than the dough. The only downside of these is they kind of need to be doctored, hence the lemon poppyseed. Next time I'm going to mix a bit of vanilla and brown sugar and use that in place of the white sugar. Should be great!  

Lemon Poppyseed Cookies, from Anyone Can Cook, by Better Homes and Gardens

Ingredients:

1 1/4 c. flour

3 T. sugar (or a mixture or vanilla and brown sugar, perhaps?)

1/2 c. butter

a generous sprinkling of poppyseeds

1/2 T. lemon peel, or to taste

Directions:

Mix the flour and sugar together, along with the poppyseeds and lemon peel, then cut in the butter with a pastry cutter or a knife. Roll out the cookies to desired thickness, very thin if you like shortbread crispy, slighly thicker if you prefer it crumbly and slightly moist. Cut in traditional rounds, simple squares, or fun shapes. Bake in a 325°F oven for 20-25 minutes or until bottoms just start to brown. Cool on a wire rack.

This makes slightly under two dozen cookies. Enjoy!

Grilled Zucchini.

Oh how I love summer grilling. Looking back at what I've posted lately, it would seem that I've only been cooking dessert, but that, I assure you, is not the case. We've been breaking out the grill often, which, while making delicious food, it is not usually especially unique and so I've remained silent. But now, now I MUST share this. Zucchini. Have you grilled this? It's not so much a recipe as an idea. Cut the zucchini into long thick planks, don't bother to skin it, and brush with olive oil. Sprinkle a bit of seasoned salt on top and let the grill do its work. SO GOOD. If you've been hesitant about zucchini in the past, or simply prefer other vegetables to it, I implore you, try this. 

Apple Hand Pies.

Happy 4th of July! My family is definitely going low-key this year, hanging out at home and watching what fireworks can be seen from our deck. Nevertheless, there's going to be some delicious 4th of July fare, grilling and such, going on. One thing that always seems to be touted as a perfect 4th of July dessert, beyond the red, white, and blue trifles, is apple pie. I love apple pie, but frankly, in July, especially in this heat wave we've been having, I don't want my oven on that long if I can help it. I had some apples to use up though, and I do really like apple pie, so I decided to see if I could make mini pies that didn't take as long to bake. Success!

Apple Hand Pies, by me! (with help from my mom's pie crust recipe)

Filling Ingredients:

Chopped apples (I used about three apples, but had some left over. You could probably make these with two.)

Brown sugar

Lemon juice

Vanilla

Butter

Cinnamon

Pumpkin pie spice/apple pie spice (I had pumpkin pie spice on hand)

salt (optional)

Crust Ingredients:

1 cup flour

1/4 tsp salt

6 Tbsp cold butter

1 1/2-2 T cold water

a pinch of brown sugar and cinnamon, if you like (I liked.)

Directions:

For crust: Mix flour and salt together. Cut in butter with a pastry blender or knives. Slicing it up into small chunks first makes this easier. Once the butter and flour mixture is well blended, and resembles small peas, add in the water, a little at a time. Blend as you go, adding just enough water till everything holds together. You probably won't need it all. Set aside in the fridge until your filling is ready.

For filling: (Sorry for the generalities ahead, everything is to taste.) Chop apples into small chunks. Throw some brown sugar over top, add some lemon juice, and stir together. Taste an apple, and add more brown sugar or lemon juice as needed. Add a healthy splash of vanilla. Add some butter for flavor. (I used around 2 Tbsp, but you can use more or less, it's for taste, nothing else.) Add cinnamon and pie spice, stir everything together. Taste again, balance flavors if needed. Sometimes adding salt will help meld flavors, so if needed, add a little salt here.

Take the crust out of the fridge and roll it out thin. This may take a bit of work, this particular crust is rather flaky and doesn't like rolling much. If it gets too sticky, just ball it up and pop it back in the fridge to cool down for a couple minutes and try again. Once you've got the crust as thin as you want it, tear off palm sized chunks and place them on a greased tray. The edges don't have to be smooth or pretty, that's part of the charm with these.

Once all crust is on the pan, spoon filling into the center of each crust and fold the edges of the crust up around the filling. Bake for 20-25 minutes in a 350ºF oven. Let cool for a couple minutes on the pan, remove, and enjoy!

Granola Bars (or loose granola).

A while back, we bought some granola bars to help tide us over for the long car ride home from wherever we were. Jonathan LOVED them. A bit later, we bought some CLIF bars to have on hand in case of 'emergency' (needing to leave right away and realizing we'd forgotten breakfast, or to help tide through an extra long meeting, etc.). Again, the one bar Jonathan had, he loved. And obsessed over. Nearly daily, he begged that his snack/breakfast/lunch/dinner/whatever could be a CLIF bar. This was getting out of hand! I decided that if he loved granola bars so much, I'd rather make them and know exactly what was in them. 

Then, for my birthday, Jonathan got me a new cookbook, and lo and behold, there was a granola bar recipe in it. It seemed destined to be. :)

Granola Bars, or Loose Granola, from The Supper Club, by Susie Cover

Ingredients:

3 1/4 c. old-fashioned oatmeal

1/2 c. flaxseed (recipe specifies golden, I used the regular that I had on hand.)

1 1/2 c. shredded coconut, preferably unsweetened (I used sweetened, what I had)

1 c. dried cranberries, chopped coarsely (ended up using raisins in second batch, ran out of craisins)

1/3 c. packed brown sugar

3 T. honey

3 T. maple syrup

2 T. canola oil (I used corn oil)

2 T. vanilla extract (yes, Tablespoons, not teaspoons!)

3/4 t. kosher salt

nonstick cooking spray (opt.)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

Spread the oats (and flaxseed, though I chose not to put it in at this point,) on the prepared baking sheet and toast in the oven until lightly golden and aromatic, about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, stir together the coconut and cranberries. In a small saucepan over low heat, combine the brown sugar, honey, maple syrup, oil, vanilla, and salt and cook, stirring constantly, until the brown sugar has completely dissolved and the mixture is a smooth syrup, about 5 minutes. (I frequently walked away, and there were a few granules of brown sugar left in the bottom of my syrup, but they got blended in well in the next step.)

Pour the syrup over the cranberries and coconut, add the toasted oats (and flaxseed!), and stir and toss with a rubber spatula until everything is evenly coated with the syrup and blended well.

To make loose granola, discard the parchment paper and spray your pan with cooking spray. Spread the oats mixture in a single layer on the pan and bake in a 325ºF oven, until golden brown. (Recipe says 30 minutes, but I scorched my first batch black in that time...15-20 should be fine.) 

To make granola bars, lightly spray the parchment paper with cooking spray (or not, I forgot to!) and spread the oats mixture evenly across it. Press down until everything is one large, evenly layered rectangle. Bake until golden brown, about 15-20 minutes in a 325ºF oven. Let cool till only slightly warm, then cut into bars. Transfer to the refrigerator and let the bars set and cool completely, about 1 hour. Then, using a thin spatula, remove bars from the pan and serve. (I removed the bars from the pan when I cut them, and packed them in a container in the fridge to cool.) Enjoy!