Apple Muffins

Those familiar with Cindy Woodsmall's Ada's House series know that the series title refers to bakery Ada runs with help from Cara and Deborah. So to go along with The Harvest of Grace, I baked Apple Muffins from The Fearless Baker by Emily Luchetti and Lisa Weiss. (A review of this cookbook, which was provided for review by the publisher, is coming but I need to test out a few more recipes first.) Now I am far from a fearful baker, the target audience, but I love simple recipes that don't require much in the way of special equipment. These muffins were so simple that I actually had all the ingredients at hand (thanks to a coworker who provided the apples from his orchard). The recipe was easy to follow and made precisely 12 muffins. And even better, they were absolutely delicious!

Summer Squash Muffins

Like Alison’s father in Heartstrings and Diamond Rings by Jane Graves, I’m not much for eating the “healthy” stuff preferring steak and potatoes for dinner followed by calorie-laden desserts. I’m one of those who gets her vegetables by drinking fruit/vegetable juice blends. But I will experiment with ingredients in my baking; so when a coworker brought in some massive squash from her garden, I decided to see what I could bake. I headed to allrecipes.com since the site allows you to search by ingredients. It came back with this Summer Squash Bread that I turned into muffins (just bake 20-25 minutes instead of the 45 minutes called for in the recipe). The batter didn’t look too appetizing, so I wasn’t sure about these, but they tasted great.

Banana Chocolate Chunk Muffins

Not long after I made the Cherry Crumb Muffins featured in my review of the Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook, I made another variation of their basic muffin: Banana Chocolate Chunk Muffins. Once again they were delicious and easy to make. These muffins use the same base, so they actually just get easier and easier to make. Since these muffins weren’t a part of the cookbook review, I decided that I could do what I always like do and change something. I added far more chocolate than the ¾ cup called for because I love chocolate. If you do too, I would recommend adding chocolate because even with the extra I felt there could be more. My other suggestion would be to mash the bananas a little (I’ll try this next time I make them) because I would’ve liked for the bananas to be more distributed throughout the muffin rather than coming in large chunks here and there.