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!

To Die for Blueberry Muffins

These muffins really ARE to die for.  I got the recipe from a friend ages ago, and now I don't make any other blueberry muffins, because they just don't compare.  I didn't know where SHE got the recipe, so I googled it and found it on AllRecipes.com.  I have tweaked the recipe a little to fill a 12 cup muffin pan.

To Die For Blueberry Muffins

To Die For Blueberry Muffins

Makes 12 oversized muffins

3 cups flour

3/4 cups Splenda blend (double amount to use regular sugar)

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp +  1 tsp baking powder

2/3 cup oil

2/3 cup milk

2 eggs

2 cups blueberries (the small, wild variety work best; the large, cultivated variety are okay, but just not as good)

Topping:

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup flour

1/4 cup butter

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400.  Combine flour, sugar, salt and baking powder.  Mix in eggs, oil and milk. Fold in blueberries.  Fill greased muffin cups (not paper liners) right to the top and sprinkle with topping. Bake 20-25 minutes until done.

For topping: Mix all ingredients with a pastry blender until crumbly.

These muffins are A-MAZ-ING.  I make them for brunches all the time and they are always the first things to go.  Sometimes, I don't even get one!