Orange-Honey Muffins

Cheesecake tomorrow, muffins today! I have a playgroup coming over tomorrow and I'm making the cheesecake for the moms, these muffins are for the kiddos.  This is another recipe that has been sitting in my "I cut it out of a magazine" file for I don't even know how long.  The original recipe seems to have come from Florida's Natural Orange Juice.  This particular recipe doesn't seem to be on their site, although I did find a few others I'd like to try!  For this recipe, I made a few modifications.  I used raw Ukrainian honey, butter instead of margarine and 2 eggs instead of egg substitute.

Orange-Honey Muffins
1/2 cup Orange Juice
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup honey
2/3 cup margarine, melted
1/2 cup egg substitute
1 tsp vanilla extract

In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda.  In a small bowl, combine the honey, juice, margarine, egg and vanilla.  Whisk until smooth and stir into dry ingredients.
Line a muffin pan (mine is stoneware from Pampered Chef) with paper liners and fill each cup 2/3 full with batter (I actually filled them a little more that that).  Bake at 375F for 20 minutes.

The flavor of the raw honey definitely shone through in these muffins, but in a good way.  If you don't like raw honey, you'd probably want to use regular, store-bought honey.  But they came out very moist, buttery and light.  My little helper and I split one to test them out and we agreed that they were yummy! I think they'll be perfect for the kiddos tomorrow!

Banana Nut Bread

We're pretty picky about bananas.  For me, they need to be slightly green.  Once they're completely ripe, they're too ripe for me.  For my son, they can't have any brown spots, and they can't have any green.  And for my husband, they can't have any green, but they can have a few spots.  But we're all in agreement that once they turn mostly brown, the only thing they are good for is banana bread or muffins. But sometimes I only have 1 or 2, and that's not enough, so I will peel them, toss them in a freezer bag and freeze them for later.  Then, when I have 3 (which is how many my banana bread recipe calls for) and the time and inclination, I will take them out and thaw them and make banana bread.

My banana bread recipe is my mom's.  I have no idea where she got it, but it's the one we have both been using for years.  I have tried others, just for the heck of it, and in my opinion, they just don't compare.  Of course, I'm biased.

My Mother's Banana Bread

This recipe makes enough for a very full loaf or 1 dozen very full muffins.  You could probably do smaller muffins and stretch it to 18.  I love to take a slice and put in in a frying pan and kind of grill it that way and then butter it.  I'm drooling thinking about it now.  Or cut a muffin in half and fry it the same way. I also love to make french toast with it.

Banana Bread

1/2 cup shortening (I use crisco sticks)

1 cup sugar

3 eggs

3 bananas

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

2 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup sour milk or cream

1 cup chopped walnuts

To sour the milk or cream, add 1 tsp white vinegar and let sit for 5-10 minutes.  Mash bananas and set aside.

Mix shortening, sugar and eggs.  Add bananas to mixture, the the mixed dry ingredients alternately with the sour sour milk.  Add in nuts last, if desired (it's just as yummy without them!) Pour into a loaf pan.

Bake at 350F for 1 hour (depending on climate, it may need longer.  I've had to bake it up to 1 hour 20 minutes before)

Enjoy!

Cranberry Orange Yeast Bread

That's right, cranberry orange bread that is not a quick bread.

I had a urge to use my bread machine today.  The one I got for $10 on a local trading site: www.bookoo.com.  It was practically brand new and I have gotten my money out of it, easily, in the less than a month I have had it.

So with my sweet tooth aching and really wanting cinnamon raisin bread and not having any raisins in the house, I found a recipe for cranberry orange bread at this site.  Although, once I found this site, I had to narrow my choices down since there are so many tempting bread recipes on there.

Recipe Directions (I made a 1 lb loaf since it's just me and my munchkin eating it):

=== SMALL LOAF - 1 lb MACHINE === 2/3 cup milk -- room temperature 1 egg -- beaten 1 tablespoon butter or margarine 2 cups bread flour homestyle white flour 1 tablespoon sugar 1 1/2 teaspoon grated orange rind 3/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup dried cranberries 1 1/2 teaspoon bread machine yeast === LARGE LOAF - 1 1/2 to 2 lb MACHINE === 1 cup milk -- room temperature 1 egg -- beaten 1 tablespoon butter or margarine 3 cups bread flour homestyle white flour 1 tablespoon sugar 2 teaspoon grated orange rind 1 teaspoon salt 3/4 cup dried cranberries 2 teaspoon bread machine yeast Select loaf size. Add ingredients to machine in listed order. Select WHITE cycle. This recipe yields 1 loaf. So, you can do this in the bread machine from start to finish, but I like to do just the dough cycle and then bake in the oven.  I like the size of a loaf from a loaf pan better and all the real work is done for me by the bread machine, so it's not that hard.  So I set all the ingredients in this morning, set the dough cycle, left to go grocery shopping and came home to dough ready to put in the loaf pan, rise and bake.  I baked it on 375 for 35 minutes and it was perfect.  Easy (and yummy-even the munchkin agreed!) I think that next, I am going to have to make the dried tomato and rosemary bread