Special Cranberry-Maple Muffins

cranberry maple muffinI have struggled and struggled with this recipe, as the muffins tasted really good but didn’t rise very well. It seemed to me as if the issue must be with the leavening. If you have acidic ingredients such as buttermilk, as my original recipe did, then you’re supposed to use baking soda instead of baking powder, but the recipe called for baking powder. So I’ve tried a number of different leavening amounts and combinations, but I never was quite satisfied with the results. After one especially disastrous experiment I got a Sally’s Baking Addiction post in my inbox (she’s one of only three cooking websites to which I subscribe) that was basically her version of this recipe, although with different spices. Boy, would it have been helpful if she’d made those muffins a week earlier! The version I had just produced

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Complicated-but-Good Harvest Muffins

many muffinsI would highly recommend these muffins, and you could leave off the topping if you want them to have less sugar.  The amount in the muffins themselves isn’t too bad.  You do have to measure a fair number of spices and grate apples.  I kept trying to talk myself out of putting in the apples when I made this recipe for the first time, as I didn’t want to bother, but I decided I’d better go ahead and include them and I was glad I did.  The combination of the pumpkin and the apple is really good, and the apples are probably counted as part of the liquid in the recipe.  So it’s kind of a pain, but worth it.  These probably aren’t muffins that you’d whip up for a regular weekday breakfast, but they’re very nice for a special occasion.

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Labor-Intensive but Worthwhile Muffins

two plates up pumpkin streusel muffinsAnother one of my badly-composed photographs.  I always end up frantically taking a few shots at the very last minute before the hordes pour in the door.  We had a very nice retreat breakfast, and the pictured pumpkin muffins were eaten down to the last crumb.  I’ve made the recipe a little less complicated.  As I’ve mentioned before, the principle for recipes is that you must make three changes in it in order to claim it as your own.  I’m giving full credit to America’s Test Kitchen for the original recipe, but I have made three changes:  I made muffins instead of bread, I’ve changed the technique for getting water out of the pumpkin, and I’ve taken the butter out of the streusel topping, as the use of butter makes the topping very clumpy.  (Also, as you’ll see, there’s another small change I made as I was typing the recipe, so you can note yet another unnecessary step they were making you do!)

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