Orange Blueberry Muffins

When I acquired a copy of Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours a couple months ago, my reasoning was I needed it for whatever challenges The Daring Bakers might throw out, but really it’s because I wanted to try every recipe in the book. I’d seen wonderful samples all over the cooking blogs for so long I couldn’t hold out any longer.

Even though The Daring Bakers made Dorie’s Perfect Party Cake in March, I felt I should start at the beginning and work my way through the book, so we started with her Orange Blueberry Muffins for breakfast one morning, and they were gone in a flash. As I studied the recipe the night before, I realized I had some homemade candied orange peel stored in a jar of sugar in the pantry, and I couldn’t resist adding it. I chopped about 1/4 cup of the peel (sorry, I forgot to weigh it) and then sprinkled some of the orange sugar on top of the muffins. As it turns out, it’s a good thing I added the chopped orange peel because Top Gun was stealing blueberries behind my back, so adding the orange peel helped make up for the loss of the blueberries.

We enjoyed the extra orange flavor, and now I have to make more candied orange peel so we can have these muffins again.  The orange and blueberry combination was delicious. And as for the color, they really were that orange! Read more

The Sweet Melissa Baking Book

How often do you find a cookbook that is so chock full of good recipes that you want to make every single one of them? That day? That’s how I felt when The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy arrived in my mailbox. I grabbed the package and took it along in the car when I went to pick up the boys for school, knowing I would have a few minutes to browse while waiting for them. A few minutes was not enough because I found myself pouring over the pages. Many of my cookbooks have sticky flags on the pages with recipes that I like or want to try, but for Murphy’s book I didn’t even bother because I will eventually make everything in it, and the things that I have made so far have been fantastic.

Murphy is the chef and owner of Sweet Melissa Patisserie in New York City, a popular bakery considered one of the best in the city. I spent some time on the bakery’s website, wishing I had a spot in my neighborhood with food that good so I could take the laptop and hang out there on my mommy days. The menu is so tempting and her wedding and specialty cakes are breathtaking. I plan to take a trip to New York City sometime, and one of my first stops will be Sweet Melissa, especially if it has WiFi. Murphy also has a few baking podcasts available on PodCastGo.com, which are now on my iPod.

Because my favorite meal is breakfast, I started in the “Dessert for Breakfast” chapter with her Sweet Muffins recipe. For both her sweet and savory muffins, Murphy encourages variation by not specifying particular fruits or cheeses and vegetables within the text of the recipes, but saves the suggestions for tasty combinations for the end. I made the sweet muffins while Michael’s parents were visiting a few weekends ago, and added apples, cinnamon, and dried cranberries. The muffins were a hit, and it’s a good thing I made a double batch that morning, otherwise there would have been none left for me to photograph. They were perfect right out of the pan, no butter or jam required, with a slightly crispy crust and moist crumb, and the vanilla sugar on top added a sweet, aromatic crunch. Read more