Back at it again with brunch! Today I made chocolate chip pumpkin muffins. I’ve made these once before—about this same time last year, actually—and they’ve been delicious both times.
I used my own fresh, homemade pumpkin purée for this. Since I haven’t cooked with the canned kind, so I can’t really compare the two, but I do think it’s fun to bake the actual pumpkin.
I’m not exactly sure where the original recipe for this came from, but I did make a few changes to it today. First, I replaced half of the oil with applesauce, and then instead of two cups of sugar I put in one, plus a half cup of Stevia. Still tasted great!
My brother said today: “I hope we’ll see more of these in the future!” and I can guarantee that we will.
This week, I had planned to make English muffins, but then I decided to take it a step further with Eggs Benedict! I’ve never actually had Eggs Benedict before, but I think these were really good!
The hardest part of making these was doing everything at the same time. All of the steps were simple, but when I was cooking the muffins, poaching the eggs, cooking the bacon, and making the sauce all at once, it was a bit chaotic. Let’s just say I have a new appreciation for all of the multi-tasking my mom does when she cooks dinner every night!
A few days ago, while we were on a walk, my dad mentioned that blueberry muffins sounded good to him. I kept this in mind and made them for brunch today! Just so you know: I’m always thinking about what to bake next, so if you’re ever craving a certain treat, just drop a subtle hint…they might just happen to show up within the next few days!
I had a hard decision to make when choosing a recipe: should I make regular blueberry muffins, or blueberry oatmeal muffins? I’d narrowed it down to two recipes…it was just a choice of one or the other. The hard thing about these surprise brunches is that I can’t ask my family for their input! Being an incredibly indecisive person, this is unbelievable difficult for me. Eventually, I caved and asked my mom which one to make. She said regular blueberry—so that’s what I went with! I think it was a good choice, too. As for the other recipe, I’ll have to try it sometime soon, as well.
When baking these muffins, I made quite a few changes to the recipe. First of all, I thought that 1¼ cup sugar sounded like way too much, even when I compared it to other recipes. I ended up putting in just shy of 1 cup, and they were still plenty sweet. Next time, I think I’ll probably reduce it even more.
I’ve read about substituting applesauce for butter or oil in muffins, and I thought I’d give it a try. This being my first time, I didn’t want to make a big mistake, so I only replaced a third of the butter. Better to be safe than sorry. I’ve heard that using applesauce can make muffins too dense, but that wasn’t a problem for mine. They had a perfect texture—moist and soft, and neither too dense nor too airy.
There were two more changes I made to these muffins. I didn’t sprinkle sugar over the top—just a minor difference, but I thought I’d mention it. Personally, I’m not a fan of sugar-sprinkled muffins. Next, I changed the baking temperatures a little.
Before going into this, I read a lot about muffins, and how doing different things can make them turn out differently. Actually, here’s one of the posts that proved to be very helpful and interesting: https://www.handletheheat.com/ultimate-guide-muffins/
One thing I learned was that by putting the muffins in the oven at a higher temperature for the first few minutes, then lowering it for the rest of the bake time, you can get taller, rounder muffins with bigger tops. Well, mine certainly rose…many of them too much so! I don’t think that the high-low temperature method was to blame for that, though. A lot of the muffin tins were just filled too high. At least I got three perfect looking muffins: just enough for a nice photo!
The three perfect muffins next to their not-so pretty siblings…haha!
