Honey Muffin

Taneasha has been telling me lately that I don't make enough chocolate stuff.

So I made honey-blueberry muffins.

Apparently I'm feeling a little contrary today. Today. Ha.

Honey Muffins with Berries

2 cups flour
1-1/2 tsp baking powder
1-1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup orange juice
1/3 cup plain yogurt (greek style if you have it)
1/3 cup vegetable oil (peanut works)

2/3 c berries
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp orange juice

 

Preheat oven to 400°F and line your muffin cups.

Realize there was no honey in your ingredients pic. Honey muffins and no honey...

In a big bowl, combine all the dry stuff: flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cardamom, sugar. Yes, sugar. I know it usually goes into the wet stuff, or the butter so it will dissolve first, but, as I said, I’m feeling contrary today.

I’m a little concerned about this recipe because my yogurt is a wee bit thicker than your typical yogurt.

Seriously, you could spread this stuff on a bagel and eat it like cream cheese.

The yogurt, honey, and orange juice can be piled into one cup, measure by displacement.

In another bowl, mix all the wet stuff: yogurt, honey, juice, eggs, oil, vanilla.

Before you mix the wet and dry, make sure your berries are thawed. Even looking at the volume in the second bowl, I was still worried about the liquid content.

So, I added a tablespoon of honey and a tablespoon of juice to a pan with them, and just melted everything. You don’t want them warm, just melted.

And dammit, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get a shot of the orange juice being poured into the pan.

Stir the wet stuff into the dry until it’s just barely mixed. Hm, doesn’t look too dry. This could pass for muffins. But, I’ve got the berries all melted, so in they go.

Again, stir until just mixed. Berries do weird stuff when you mix and bake them. If you stir them too much, they’ll actually turn green. I can't decide if these are green or purple... There's a reason I wear a lot of black.

I had enough for 13 muffins.

The 13th muffin.

I'm still having a bit of trouble with my oven. This time, I erred on the side of too hot - probably at least 425. The muffins were golden on top after only 8 minutes, but still gooey inside. By 15 minutes, they looked like this.

Muffin 13, despite the heat, still lost it's peak in the middle.

I think I need new baking powder.

But heat was definitely a factor in these.

They are tasty though. Very caramelly in flavour as well as colour. And the honey really comes through. I think next time, I'll omit the sugar and add a bit more honey. They're really quite sweet. More blueberries too. Or maybe none?

At least they're not green anymore?

What's Crack-a-lackin'?

So I decided to jump on the square bandwagon with Seeley.  I’ve been wanting to make these for awhile, so why not?  Last year, I discovered the most amazing crackers at Trader Joe’s.  They were called Bite Size Everything Crackers.  Unfortunately, I only had one box before they stopped carrying them.  Every time I’m there I browse the cracker section in hopes of finding them again, but so far, I’ve had no such luck.  Finally, I decided just to try to make them myself.  That being said, it took a few tries to get what I was looking for, so if the measurements look off in some of my pictures, or if the continuity is all wonky, just ignore that.  Like I said, it took a few tries. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

• ½ cup hot water
• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 2 Tablespoons dried onions (mine were toasted)
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon caraway seeds
• 1 teaspoon poppy seeds
• 1 teaspoon sesame seeds
• ¼ teaspoon salt (plus more for sprinkling on top)

Go ahead and preheat your oven to 400° before starting.  These come together pretty quickly.  Measure ½ cup hot water and add your butter so it will melt. 

While that’s doing its thing, go ahead and put all of the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl.  Now at this point, you can adjust these to make them however you like.  Don’t like caraway seeds?  Leave them out.  Really love garlic?  Add extra garlic powder, or if you have dried, minced garlic, throw some of that in.

Whatever you decide to use, stir it all together so that everything is evenly distributed. 

Add the olive oil to the butter and water and pour that over the dry mixture. 

Stir/knead just until everything comes together.  If you don’t have enough liquid to incorporate all of the flour, add more water 1 teaspoon at a time. 

Cover that and let it rest for 5 minutes.  The mixing will have developed gluten which needs to relax a bit so you can roll the dough out.  After 5 minutes, it’s time to do just that.  It’s a bit of a pain to roll it out on parchment, but in the end it’s the best way to do it. 

Divide the dough in half and roll each until it is very thin.  If it’s fighting you and springing back, give it a few more minutes to rest.  Basically, you want to get it as thin as you possibly can.  When it looks like this, you’re getting close, but not there yet. 

When you get the dough thin enough, use something straight as a guide and cut off the edges to make something resembling a square or rectangle.  A pizza wheel works well for this. 

Cut the square into smaller squares.  They will actually shrink a little bit when they cook, so cut them slightly larger than you want the end result to be.  I think mine were about 1 ¼ inches.  

Next, sprinkle a bit of salt over the top.  How much to use really depends on how much you like salt.  It’s easiest to control where it goes and get an even dispersal if you just use your fingertips to sprinkle it.  I used probably somewhere between ¼ and ½ teaspoon.  After you’ve got it salted, take a fork and poke each cracker 3 times.  This part is sort of optional, but it makes it so you don’t get any large air bubbles in your crackers.  (Ignore the salt, I got a bit carried away on this batch.  That was before I figured out using your fingers works much better than shaking it from a measuring spoon.)

Now slide the whole sheet of parchment onto a sheet pan and into the oven they go.  The amount of time depends on two things: how thin you got your dough, and how dark you like your crackers.  It’ll probably be something like 12 – 15 minutes.  Just watch them.  You want them to just start to brown around the edges.  (Look, you’ve made homemade crackers!)

Allow them to cool on the pan and then move them to a bowl for snacking.  If you left, just store them in an airtight container.  I don’t know why, but I was totally stoked that I’d made my own crackers, but really, they were so easy.  (BTW, if you leave out all the extras you'll basically have really good wheat thins without the unpronounceable scary stuff like butylated hydroxytoluene.)

What store bought item would you like to make at home?