Muffins for your Monday Morning

These muffins were a great healthy start to our day, baked by Don last weekend!

If there’s one thing I can say about Don, it’s that he’s a team player for sure. He’ll pitch in and do whatever is needed, whenever he can. Last weekend we had a particularly busy morning and I wanted to make muffins for breakfast–we were both craving homemade muffins–but with all the other things I needed to do, I wasn’t going to be able to get it done, so Don said he’d do it.

Don loves to cook, hates to bake. He likes being able to wing it with his cooking, throwing in this or that, and baking is an exact science. You throw the wrong thing in and that’s the end of your recipe.

So the fact that he volunteered to bake muffins for us, was really great. I gave him a basic muffin recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (pg. 60 if you have their New Cook Book) and showed him all the variations he could choose from as long as we had the necessary ingredients.

The option he chose to go with was an oatmeal muffin and he threw in raisins. He’s always loved Oatmeal Raisin cookies, so this option did not surprise me. I love baking with raisins, they’re so sweet  and I devoured these muffins too. Everyone did, some with jelly once they realized the raisins were not chocolate chips, and some without jelly.

This means Don can no longer claim he can’t bake. The secret is out. Next time I’m in a bind, he’s on.

Here’s his recipe, taken from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. I’ll give you the basic muffin recipe first, with our modifications, and the oatmeal variation at the end, just the way the cookbook does.

Muffins
Ingredients

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour  (whatever the recipe, we do half wheat, half white flour)

1/3 cup sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1 beaten egg

3/4 cup milk (we use skim)

1/4 cup cooking oil (we use nonfat yogurt instead of oil)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

In a mixing bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and 1/4 tsp. salt. (Salt is not listed in the ingredients though; I don’t know why.)

Make a well in the center.

Combine egg, milk and oil; add all at once to the flour mixture.

Stir just til moistened (batter should be lumpy).

Lightly grease muffin cups or line with paper bake cups; fill 2/3 full.

Bake in a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes or til golden. Remove from pans, serve warm.

Makes 10-12 (we got 12).

Oatmeal variation:

Prepare as above except reduce flour to 1 1/3 cups and add 3/4 cups rolled oats to the flour mixture.

Other variations included: Blueberry, Cranberry, Jelly, Date Nut, Cheese, Banana, Pumpkin, and Corn muffins.

Tags: baking, breakfast, eating on a budget, Jennifer L. Cowart, Low Fat Oatmeal Raisin Muffins, Oatmeal Raisin Muffins, picky eaters, recipes