Recipe Review - Pumpkin Streusel Muffins

One of the few catalogs I love to see in our mail box has got to be the spice catalog from Penzey's Spices. We received a gift box from them as a wedding gift, and I have become an addict ever since. One of the things that I love about the catalog is the recipes they include. The recipes are from fellow Penzey fans and illustrate how to use their spices in the dishes. This last issue was all devoted to Fall and Thanksgiving. I am a fall fiend, and I love all the flavors of fall. Pumpkin is decidedly one of my favorites, so when I spied their recipe for Pumpkin Streusel Muffins from Kathy Ness, I had to make them. They looked too good to pass up. The recipe is quite easy to make. The hardest part is remembering to take out the butter to soften! The big advantage to this recipe for me this particular week is that it does not need paper cups! I somehow ran out of them, so this was a perfect morning muffin for both flavor and no need for anything other than ingredients. In fact, after eating them this morning, I would say that the paper cups would take away from the wonderful texture of the crust on the bottom half of the muffin. It is very similar to making a pumpkin pie as it needs both pumpkin as well as evaporated milk, and this is where I have the smallest of dislikes for the recipe.


The recipe calls for only a 1/4 cup of evaporated milk. This is such a small amount that it makes me wonder what to do with the rest of the can of milk. I am planning on making a mini pumpkin pie with the left overs of the pumpkin and the milk, but there will still be too much milk, plus it would be great to be able to make this with out opening up a can of milk if I wanted to as I can freeze the pumpkin for later or use it in a pumpkin spice coffee. So to the internet I turned, and I found out that you can in fact substitute out evaporated milk for powdered milk and water. I will test the recipe some day soon and let you know how it all turns out  in a Follow Up Friday. For now though, I highly recommend these super tasty muffins! If you try making them with the substitution, I would love to hear what your results were. Until then, happy baking, and I hope you are enjoying fall.

Life is Peachy!

Life is peachy lately. Things seem to be humming along at a fast pace, and my days are filled with all sorts of urban homesteading activities. Aside from the canning, I now have the garden to tend. Let me tell you, I am loving getting my hands dirty and weeding away. I am also staring Christmas crafting in the face. I hope to get an early start this year... just like every year. For now, though, I am thoroughly busy with canning. As you can see by my lack of posting, most of my time has been occupied with things like canning. At the end of August, it was all about peaches. I bought a 25 pound box of peaches as well as a couple of other pounds along the way for canning projects. The first thing I do when I take home a large box of any produce is to sort it right away looking for any bruised fruit. The bruised fruit gets quarantined from the rest of the lot to ensure that no further spoilage is encouraged. This box had just enough fruit with bruises and spoilage for an early peach cobbler.

This time around, I decided to try out the recipe from Cook's Illustrated. If you do not have a subscription to the website, I highly recommend it. The amount of recipes at your fingertips as well as knowledgeable equipment reviews are well worth the subscription fee in my opinion. I have to say that the recipe was rather fussy, but I felt like it was worth it, at least for the topping. One thing that I do recognize now is that I will no longer be using the boiling water technique in these pictures for peeling peaches ever again. I find that this method does not work very well for my favorite type of peach, the O'Henry. While this is a super freestone peach, it does not want to be skinned for some reason. I have, therefore, decided to only peel them from now on with my awesome Messermeister serrated peeler. Yes the peeler is a bit expensive, but I have to say it is well worth the price. I will, however, miss the beautiful color that the boiling water turns when scalding the peaches. It is the most wonderful purple hue!

The other big advantage of the O'Henry peach is that it remains firm even through cooking. I like that the flesh does not all go to mush when processing it or turning it into a cobbler or pie. The slices still have integrity and a wonderful texture. Here is where the recipe gets a bit fussy, and while the step is totally necessary for a good result, I wished there was another way. The recipe has you macerate and strain off the extra juice from the peaches so that the cobbler does not become a soupy mess. The topping was another story. It was as simple as most recipes, and it resulted in a very tender biscuit due to the addition of yogurt.

I do want to make one more of these before all the fresh peaches have left the market. I especially love the extra crunch on the top of the biscuits that the sugar crusting creates. I do think that I will add a bit more cinnamon to it next time as I am a cinnamon fan. I highly recommend this recipe and have saved it as a favorite. I do have to say, though, that this did not dethrone the Dutch oven cobbler that we made when camping. That was so good, and I am not sure if it was the long hike before dinner, or that it was just really that good that made it taste so delicious. Perhaps some day I will make both at once and taste them side by side. Until then, try out this recipe and for an added touch of awesome, serve it hot with a little scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream!

English Muffin Experiments

The quest to find an English muffin recipe that I like as well as the store bought variety continues. I have tried several recipes, and this one ended up with the same results: not enough nooks and crannies for my liking. Through these experiments, I have come to find that there seem to be two schools of English muffins. The first is the Thomas' or Bay's school of thought, more like a crumpet and less like a roll. The dough on the outside is definitely all roll with some good chew and a little crust; the inside reveals a velvety softness that is held aloft by huge air pockets. Fork split is the only option as knife cutting mars the pockets left by the leavening. The other type is decidedly more bread like and no where near a crumpet. This has its merits too, but it is not what I am look to replicate. I would love to replace the expensive store bought ones for a cheaper but just as tasty and craggy delicate product.

This time I tried the recipe from Reinheart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. This recipe was one that is completed in one day, but it made a bread style dough. From the outset I was afraid that this one would end up like the old Fleshman's recipe I had tried. These muffins that are more dough based are more like a lightened up dinner roll style dough. There is kneading and shaping involved. I kept thinking that perhaps somehow these could end up with the airy middles, but that was not to be. They cooked up really tall and the browning I achieved on this set is probably the best I have ever reached. These also take some time in the oven after the initial skillet cooking. They had great flavor and were very soft and pleasant, but not what I was looking for in terms of school one of English muffins. I did make sure to fork split them just in case I was wrong, but alas, no really big nooks or crannies to be found. The crumb was nice and the muffin was rather light, but it was not the recipe I was looking to keep.

If you do fall into the more substantial English muffin school of thought, these were very easy to make with little hands on time. Their flavor was good, and we enjoyed using them with eggs Benedict as well as with some homemade jam and marmalade. I am looking at a new recipe that I think may finally be the winner. This one is more of a batter like dough that needs to be spooned into crumpet rings on the griddle and the muffins do not go into the oven at all. The pictures look promising, and other home bakers who have blogged about their use of the recipe have pictures that look exactly like what I am questing to achieve. As soon as we get more bread flour and finish off the last of these muffins, I will dive in and let you know my results.