~ Love on a Snowy Day ~

Winter in Louisville means an occasional snow day.  On the first lucky day in February, I decided to make blueberry muffins.  While Josh headed outside to shovel my drive and uncover my car, I headed to the kitchen to make breakfast for us.

Yes, the muffins are heart-shaped.  I have the regular and mini Wilton silicone pans.  I’m still trying to decide if I like them.  While muffins always bake well in them, the pans are terrible to clean.  I’ve followed many tips for using them, including baking with and without non-stick spray.  Either way, I cannot get the muffins to come out in one piece and I always have a tough time getting the spray gunk off the pans after.  Anyone have any suggestions (other than throwing the pans away and going back to my regular metal muffin pans)?
I had blueberries in the freezer that I chose to use in these muffins.  Instead of letting them thaw, I threw the frozen berries into the batter and they promptly froze the batter.  It was a little difficult to evenly fill the muffin pans, but I liked that none of the berries got mushed while I was folding them into the batter.  They stayed fat and round, and looked wonderful in the hot muffins.
Here’s my favorite muffin recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 cup fresh blueberries

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.
2. Combine flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder. Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup; add the egg and enough milk to fill the cup. Mix this with flour mixture. Fold in blueberries. Fill muffin cups right to the top, and sprinkle with crumb topping mixture.
3. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until done.

Tuesdays With Dorie - Double Crusted Blueberry Pie

It's Tuesday again and that means another Dorie recipe!

This week Amy of South in Your Mouth selected Double Crusted Blueberry Pie as the recipe of choice. I've loved every recipe so far, but WOW this one was great. I'm not a huge blueberry fan so I was apprehensive about making and then eating the pie. I took it to my aunt's house so we could have first tastes together and was glad I was able to leave the pie with her family--I would have eaten the whole thing myself. I am now a blueberry lover.

My pie is not round this week. When I went to get my pie pan I remembered I had dropped and broken my only pan earlier this year. Not wanting to borrow dishes from a neighbor, I took the next best dish--my bread pan. A rectangle pie tastes just as good as a round one.

The construction of the pie was similar to all other pies I've made...no special skills needed this week. I did learn one trick, though. To keep the blueberry juices from seeping into the bottom crust, we sprinkled bread crumbs on the crust before adding the filling. Two days later when we cut pieces of pie, the crust was still white and was not soggy from juice. The crust was magnificent. I used the recipe for a single crust since I was working with a small pan. I wish I had made just a bit more dough as I couldn't quite seal the edges all the way around. It was crisp and flaky and turned a beautiful brown color.

Happy eating, everyone!

Tuesdays With Dorie - Mixed Berry Cobbler

Beth of Our Sweet Life chose Mixed Berry Cobbler as our recipe of the week. I was excited to see this recipe as I had just gotten fresh raspberries and blackberries at the fruit market, but I do have mixed reviews about the results. As others noted in the Q-and-A section of TWD, there were issues with the topping.

I chose to make the cobbler in individual ramekins. I used the raspberries and blackberries and mixed them with a bit of sugar and a splash of lemon juice. I piled the fruit into the ramekins, knowing that it would all bake down in the oven.


To make the topping I mixed flour, sugar, butter, and milk until it was "soft and sticky." I tested the mixture and it tasted pretty good at this point. I rough-rolled it into circles to cover the ramekins and laid each on top of the fruit.


The cobblers were baked for 30 minutes at 375 and came out bubbly and spilling over the edges a bit--perfect!



Jacki came over and helped me taste the creations. Her first reaction was that the topping tasted like raisin bran. I'm not sure that's exactly what I would say, but the dry part of the topping did taste plain. Digging into the dishes, however, we found topping that had started to sop up the berry juice. That part was wonderful...pink/purple, hot, juicy...just what a cobbler should be like.

End Notes:

• I will definitely be making this recipe again...with a few changes
  --almond or vanilla flavor in the topping
  --sugar sprinkled on top
  --lots of strawberries--the juice will soak into the topping
• "Baking: From My Home to Yours" by Dorie Greenspan can be purchased here: Amazon
• Tuesdays With Dorie site is here: TWD

Each time I go into the kitchen to bake something, Joey comes in and wants to be near me. Since my hands are usually full and my attention is on the baking activities, he had resorted to jumping on the only available place--my back. I have some nice scars to show where he has dug his claws in. I recently moved a stool to the middle of the kitchen so he can safely watch the activities without hurting me. Here he is on his stool waiting for me to finish the day's work.