It's in the Bag, Gluten Free & The WoW Diet



Showing posts with label Muffins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muffins. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

CRUMB CAKE MUFFINS!

Yay for recipes! We are happy to introduce our first teaser recipe! Wouldn't you know it? It's a muffin. The Bag Lady's Crumb Cake Muffins are very likely my favorite muffin in her vast repertoire, so you are all in for a treat. It's perfectly delightful to bite into a warm, soft, fragrant muffin base generously coated in a pillow of cinnamon kissed crumbs. In fact, I am one of those people that pulls the muffin top of first, because it is the best part...wasn't there a Seinfeld episode about muffin tops?

The posted recipe is the food storage version. When we make these muffins for a regular breakfast, we use fresh butter and save the canned butter. You never know when you'll need a crumb muffin in the midst of a crisis. The canned butter we buy has a 30 year shelf life and tastes almost exactly like fresh butter. Different brands of canned butter have different tastes, so make sure you taste-test before you buy any large quantities for storage.





Crumb Cake Muffins
Batter:
1 cup + 2 tablespoons water
½ cup cooled melted canned butter
Re-closable bag:
1¾ cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup granulated white sugar
1¾ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons powdered egg
3 tablespoons powdered milk

Pantry items:
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon almond extract
Vegetable shortening

Muffin Topping:
1/3 cup softened canned butter
Re-closable bag:
¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup brown sugar*
½ teaspoon cinnamon

Directions
Preheat oven to 375°F. Grease muffin pan cups with vegetable shortening. In a small bowl, combine topping ingredients. Stir topping ingredients until they resemble coarse crumbs. Pour dry ingredients into a large bowl. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and add water, butter, vanilla, and almond extract. Stir just enough to combine dry ingredients with the wet ingredients, do not over mix. Fill muffin cups ⅔ full of batter. Top muffin batter with prepared topping. Lightly spritz muffin topping with water. This will help adhere crumb topping to muffin batter. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean. Cool muffins 5 minutes before removing from cups.

*Be sure to combine brown sugar with other ingredients when you bag your mix or you will have a hard lump of brown sugar as time passes.



Like all good crumb cakes, this is loaded with butter and sugar. Although it may not be heart healthy, it will lure your teenage boys away from their Poptarts and Lucky Charms. Now THAT is magically delicious!

Friday, January 1, 2010

Do you know the muffin man?

As you may know, our kitchen is a type of laboratory. The Bag Lady carefully formulates her recipes, tries, tests, and tweaks them. As in any scientific situation, occasionally there are EXPERIMENTS GONE WRONG!!! Think Frankenstein's monster, Dr. Jekyll's infamous alter ego Mr. Hyde, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and you'll the idea of what I witnessed as I entered the kitchen during the formulative stages of some of the early recipes.
Ohhhh the HORROR!

A MUTANT MUFFIN!!!
Only one thing came to mind...

"Oh my gosh, what is that THING?!?!"

We could only be grateful that the yeast had been killed in the baking process, or we may have had a code red situation on our hands. I can see the headlines now, "City Wiped Out By Enraged,Lumpy,Muffin!" Needless to say, The Bag Lady immediately took this creation back to formula. Within an hour the recipe was recalculated, the thwarting ingredient banished, and a batch of hot, fresh, fluffy, awe-inspiring, delectable, tantalizing muffins emerged from the oven. Why yes, this is a bag meal, and the perfected recipe is ready in less than 30 minutes. Now that's something worth getting out of bed for on chilly Monday morning.