Recipe #62: Christmas Muffins

Recipe: Marmalade Muffins
Source: The Pioneer Woman Cooks
Time: 40 min
Ease: 2
Taste: 8
Leftover Value: 10
Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Keep it in the Strainer!

I woke up Christmas morning with an hour to spare before brunch with my in-laws. Despite my urge to lay around in my pajamas for that hour, I knew I must make at least one recipe. Fortunately, I still had two breakfast items left.

In an effort to not stress myself out too much during the holiday, I went to bed on Christmas Eve with my morning alarms turned off and no strict plans set for making any recipes. (Naturally, in the back of my mind I was planning what I would make if I woke up in time).

However, I did not plan out my ingredients. As in, the butter that should have been softened ahead of time.

I used the cheater's trick of cutting my refrigerated butter up and letting it sit for 15 minutes on the counter while I prepared the rest of the recipe.

Sometimes this works.

And sometimes I get impatient and use....the microwave.

The horrors, I know!

I was afraid these muffins were going to have too strong of an orangey flavor.

You know, these muffins called Marmalade muffins

Still, the zest of two oranges seemed like quite a lot to me.

The muffins were super easy to make, super easy as in everything went into one bowl and, aside from needing softened butter, they were all ingredients that could be easily tossed in.

One thing I will point out is that PW uses mini muffin tins.

In keeping with trying not to make any changes to her recipes, I used mini muffin tins. I used a mini muffin tin I already had and a mini muffin tin my sister-in-law, Kristina, gave me. She bought it after our Thanksgiving breakfast of minis and never used it.

I say all this to say that the tin Kristina gave me was a hair larger than my mini muffin tin.  The muffins that cooked in her tin came out beautifully. The smaller muffins, the ones that were cooked in my tin, did not. They stuck to the pan and were completely impossible to bring to brunch without hanging my head in shame.

I made a note not to use mini muffin pans again (even though the Kristina pan muffins all came out lovely), but my mother-in-law raved about the muffins, then stated that her favorite part was that they were mini.

Great.

All in all, they were a yummy breakfast treat. The orange wasn't overpowering, as I had feared. It was light and refreshing.

I expected them to be just another side item at breakfast, something that went unnoticed, but everyone loved them!

My favorite part was the sugar glaze poured on top just before taking them out of the pan.

My least favorite part was cleaning the pan.

Persimmon Bread

Recipe: Persimmon Bread

Source: http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/persimmon-bread#

Time: 2 hours*

Ease: 7

Taste: 10

Leftover Value: 10

Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Keep it in the Strainer!

*The recipe says three hours, but this is only if you include the complete cooling time.  With the initial 20 minutes of cooling, the time does not exceed 2 hours and 20 minutes.

My husband's uncle, Gordon, always makes me look at food through a completely different perspective.  He is one hundred percently the definition of a minimalist where food is concerned.  He is a wild supporter of fruits and veggies, and down plays the importance of extravagant seasonings on anything he eats.  We only see him two or three times a year since he lives in the sunnier and warmer side of America, but when I see him I know for certain I will learn something new and have a good time.

On Christmas, as we were relaxing between opening presents and waiting for dinner, Gordon walked around offering everyone a piece of persimmon bread made from persimmons grown on his property back home.  I had never heard of a persimmon before, but wouldn't refuse trying something new and delicious looking.

After first bite, I knew this was certainly something I needed in my life.  Despite never having met a real live persimmon before, I jotted 'persimmon bread' down in my rolling list of things to research and write about.  

These are persimmons:

Wait a minute.  One of these things is not like the other.  Can you spot it?

Since I had only eaten persimmon bread, and not actually seen the fruit itself, finding my way around chopping one up was the largest ordeal in this recipe.  A persimmon is ripe when it is orange all around.  I had one or two that still had a little green so I set them aside to have another day sliced in a salad.

I should have taken a picture of the massacre that followed lopping off the tops of the persimmons, but at that point in this recipe I was persimmoned out.  This picture is extremely deceiving, but the process of "scooping persimmon flesh from the skins" as the recipes states, is ridiculously time consuming and not to mention, down right difficult.

Zesting a orange, however, is simple.

Using orange or lemon zest always intrigues and baffles me at the same time.  I would never want to eat an orange peel, yet somehow, the essence of that peel can add a bounty of flavor to a recipe.

I had my fingers crossed that when I pureed the persimmons they would actually puree.  Somewhere during the battle of chopping and  "scooping the flesh" I began to give up hope that this recipe would turn out as delicious as Gordon's had been.  

Especially when I realized I was a little under a quarter cup short of the needed persimmon puree.

Since I had applesauce on hand, I added that to level off my cup and in the end no one was the wiser.

At the start of the recipe, raisins steep in hot water for about 20 minutes in order to plump them up.  I couldn't tell too much of a difference, but I'm sure it was time well spent.

Next time I make this, I think I'll use a scant 1/2 cup of raisins rather than a packed one.  This is only because I'm not too crazy about raisins to start with.  If you like them, then you'll love them in this.

Here was the hardest part, alright, alright, the second hardest to scooping out the persimmon flesh; baking the bread for an hour, then waiting 20 minutes for it to cool in the pan, and then waiting even longer for it to cool completely on a wire rack.

There is a slight possibility that I started slicing before it was completely cooled.

From the looks of it, I didn't do the bread any harm.

I'm positively in love with this bread.  I brought it to work two days in a row for my awesome assistant/co-teacher/confident/partner-in-goofiness/soul sister and she sang my praises and bought me coffee as payment for this bread's utter deliciousness.  

Coffee for persimmon bread?  I'd say that's a fair trade any day!*

*Especially since together they are the definition of wonderful.