Taste & Create: Breakfast Muffins, AKA Bruffins

My partner for December-January's Taste & Create was Kat of Study Food. For those of you who don't know, Taste & Create is a monthly blog event, created by my lovely friend Nicole of For the Love of Food. Each month, participants are randomly paired and tasked with creating a dish from their partner's blog.

Kat has only been blogging for a few months, but has a great start! I was tempted by Kat's Orange, Coconut, Evaporated Milk Cake, but really considered making her Cocoa Fudge Cake. I kept coming back to "Bruffin" recipe, breakfast muffins featuring bananas, blueberries and peaches. I finally left it up to my 7-year-old boy to decide between the muffins or the fudge cake, and he chose muffins, so that is what I made.

Of course when it came time to make the muffins, I didn't have everything I needed. I usually don't improvise much during Taste & Create, but I forged ahead, improvising away. I used Kat's recipe as well as the original recipe as a guide. If my muffins come out as edible as Kat's look, I will be surprised. I didn't have wheat bran, so I used a mix of whole wheat flour and all-purpose flour. Yes, I am well aware that all-purpose flour is absolutely nothing like wheat bran.

I didn't want the cinnamon and nutmeg to overwhelm the fruit, so I cut each down to 1 teaspoon. For fruit, I intended to use the canned peaches, but ran across frozen strawberries while hunting blueberries, and there you go. Bananas, blueberries, strawberries. I also added pecans to the batter, and topped them with raw sugar and slivered (and sliced) almonds. I like muffins to have crunchy AND sparkly tops.

And, discovering that we were running low on milk, I substituted plain yogurt and increased it to 3/4 cup. (Kat used 1/2 cup milk + 1/4 cup peach juice; the original recipe used 3/4 cup milk)

When I mixed the muffins in the morning, I completely forgot the melted butter. I had plenty of muffin batter leftover for a second pan, so I stirred in 1 tablespoon of butter after the first pan was in the oven. We'll see which one turns out better!

The first pan (no butter), turned out pretty good, although hard to get out of the paper muffin cups. They were tasty, but seemed to be missing something...je ne sais pas. (Butter?) My oldest boy liked them, and ate two muffins before school, so whatever it was, he must not have missed it.

The second pan (with butter), was also pretty good. I didn't really notice a difference between the ones with butter and the ones without, other than they both seemed to be missing something. I'm guessing they could have used just a bit more salt, maybe 1/2 teaspoon - 1 teaspoon total. I'll try that next time. Other than that, I don't know. And I'm not sure why they won't come out of the paper cups either...

All in all, they were good muffins, and fairly good for you with the whole wheat, yogurt and fruit. If you'd like to try them, you now have THREE different recipes from which to choose!

Oh, and be sure to tell me what YOU would do differently! =)



Bruffins: Breakfast Muffins
Adapted from Study Food

DRY:
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup chopped pecans

FRUIT:
1 cup blueberries
2 bananas, mashed
1 cup strawberries, chopped

WET:
3/4 cup plain yogurt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg, beaten
2 tablespoons butter, melted (I forgot this)
2 teaspoons vanilla

TOPPING:
sliced or slivered almonds
raw sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin, or use baking cups.

Stir dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, mash bananas, then mix in other fruit. Add wet ingredients and mix well.

Gently fold wet ingredients into dry mixture, stirring just until combined. Careful not to over mix.

Drop muffin batter into muffin cups, about 3/4 full. Sprinkle each muffin with raw sugar and top with almonds.

Bake for about 20 minutes.