Pecan Muffins

I was cruising the intertubes looking for inspiration and found this recipe at The Girl Who Ate Everything.  It is a great blog with lots of cool recipes.  I needed an appetizer or dessert in short order so I decided to try out the Pecan Pie Muffins. I ended up making some significant changes in the recipe. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Put paper liners in muffin trays.

Mix together:
1/2 cup flour
2 cups chopped pecans

Set aside.

Combine in mixer bowl:
1 Cup packed brown Sugar
2/3 c butter softened.

Mix together until sugar it is completely blended and a bit fluffy.  (Just like creaming butter and sugar for cookies.)

Mix in:

2 Eggs
1 tsp vanilla
dash salt

Gently stir in the flour and pecan mixture just until blended.  Scoop into paper liners in mini muffin tins.  Do NOT over fill.  My batch made 36 mini muffins.  Bake at 350 for12 -14 minutes.  Check at 12 minutes.  Cool on a rack. 

*** The original recipe warns you that you need to grease the muffin tins so that these don't stick.  That is why I used the paper cup liners.  When I dropped them out of the pans, the muffin cups were soaked in grease.  Really soaked in grease.  I ended up peeling off the papers before I plated them to serve.  The muffins themselves were not that greasy.   I would do it that way again.  I may play with the amount of butter a second time but these were really yummy.  They taste just like pecan pie without all of the hassle. 

*** The original recipe tells you to mix the butter and eggs together.  The butter has to be almost molten for this to work in any reasonable way. Perhaps little lumps of butter are needed to enhance the pie like effect of these muffins, but I changed to procedure to cream the butter and sugar together.

*** I added vanilla and a wee bit of salt to the original ingredients.  I felt they were necessary to enhance the flavor of the pecans.

*** Next time I will lightly press some chopped pecans to the top of the muffins before baking or consider toasting the pecans before mixing them in.  These are tasty muffins (not a one left to take a picture) but they don't have the toasted nut flavor you get from the browned nuts on the top of a pecan pie. 

Leave a comment if you try these and tell me how they worked for you. 

Variations on a Box of Jiffy Mix

My friend Martin has asked for the Corn Bread Recipe.  Providing it is almost an embarrassment. 

I've made lots of corn bread recipes.  I've gotten stone ground from the Mill (which is amazing).  I've used sour cream.  I've tried them all.  And most are good.  Some are fantastic.  But all of them take more time than a box of Jiffy Mix.  And most days, the difference isn't worth the time. 

So... Jiffy Mix.  Follow the directions.  You have a good pan of corn bread.

Add a couple tablespoons of honey and you have a sweet treat.  It is better than shortcake with fresh strawberries and cream or strawberry rhubarb compote.  Dot it with blueberry pie filling before you bake it and you have a wonderful dessert.

Add a can of corn (well drained) or an equivalent amount of blanched fresh kernels or thawed frozen kernels and you can call it a vegetable.

Add a can of creamed corn and a couple extra eggs to the above mixture and you have a quick cheater corn bread pudding.

Add a can of chopped green chilies, drained and a cup of cheddar cheese.

Add a a cup of cheese and as much bacon as survives the frying process.

Cut up the leftovers and toast in the oven for stuffing (or dressing although why they call it dressing when it goes INSIDE the bird always escaped me... or is that the difference.  It is stuffing if it is cooked inside and dressing if it is cooked along side?)

Cut up the leftovers, toast in the oven.  Put in a greased baking dish with leftover ham, veggies, whatever you have in the fridge.  Mix in a bunch of cheese and cover it with a mixture of eggs and milk/cream/half and half.  I usually use about 8 eggs and enough milk/cream to make up to 2 cups.  Blend well.  Toss in salt, pepper, garlic, spices.  Pour over the corn bread mixture.  You want to have enough milk/egg mixture to cover the bread (some floats) and be pretty sloppy in the pan.  It is not a a science.  Go with what you've got. 

 Let stand about 10 minutes.  If it looks really dry add some more milk and an egg.  Bake until set (350 for around an hour but check... your oven and conditions may vary).

Sorry, no pictures.  Just a quick post since the "recipe" is too long to make sense in a Facebook comment. 

Bread Pudding Disguised as French Toast

Spud 3 had a game night this weekend. That meant making pizza for a house full of hungry teenagers. It also meant figuring out what to feed them for breakfast -- a breakfast I wouldn't be there to prepare.

I know, cereal and donuts are always fine, assuming you have enough cereal or can send some one out for donuts, but the adult drivers were spread pretty thin so it was better to make do. Besides, when polled about breakfast (NOT my idea) the hungry monsters in the game room wanted pancakes. Ugh. I cannot make pancakes. Really. I can't. Let's not even go there.

I can make bread pudding. But if you call it bread pudding the monsters will revolt, or be revolted. If you call it French Toast they eat it up. So bread pudding... I mean french toast it was.


melt 1/4 cup butter in the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch glass baking dish. Slop the butter around so that it 'greases the sides of the dish. (I don't know why it has to be glass, but it does. Maybe I'll do the experiment some day.) Add 3/4 cup packed brown sugar. Stir until the sugar is mostly mixed in, but don't worry too much about it. Fill the dish with slices of bread. Use whatever you have. I sliced a bunch of ciabatta rolls into 3/4 inch slices and used those. You can stack or layer or slant or whatever you want. I needed it to look like french toast so I just put them in in a single layer. Whisk 6 eggs with 3/4 cup milk, 1 splash vanilla, 1 dash salt and a bunch of cinnamon. If you want to get technical it was about a tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp salt and about 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Pour over bread in dish. Cover. Refrigerate. This can be prepped at night and can sit until the monsters come out in the morning. As soon as you hear them starting to stir, Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Uncover dish and bake 30 - 40 minutes until the eggs are set and puffy. Serve with syrup, powdered sugar, milk and orange juice so you can tell their adults you TRIED to feed them something nutritious!

Definitely something I will keep in the kid recipe repertoire.

Sorry I don't have a picture. I was out driving spud one back to school and the scene in the kitchen when I returned wasn't pretty.

Bacon Day and Cornmeal pancakes

No picture this time, as this is a re-post of last year's recipe. I'm putting it here as part of my ongoing effort to collect my food blogs from the farthest reaches of the intertubes and store them in one place.

Sorry I missed posting this for International Bacon Day this year.... It is celebrated the Saturday before Labor Day.

It has been a long time since I’ve food blogged. But International Bacon Day warrants a mention. Not actually of bacon (which by the way was smoked bacon from the Amana Colonies ) but of the peach pancakes that went with it.

Yes, peach pancakes with apple syrup, mini omeletes and BACON. It was my intention to make al carbonara but once I started cooking the bacon the spuds requested breakfast for dinner. I hate to admit it, but I’m not big on making pancakes so I usually rely on a mix. But there was no mix in the cupboard. Only a couple boxes of Jiffy Mix. On the side of the box was a recipe for corn pancakes. I followed the recipe with the addition of butter instead of shortening and a dab of honey. I also added fresh cut up peaches. YUM!

So I now have yet another reason to love Jiffy Mix. I love it as cornbread made with a dash of honey. I love a slice of this warm under vanilla ice cream with fresh strawberry jam on top of it all. I love it made with corn, jalapenos and cheddar cheese. I love it made with cheddar cheese and bacon. I love it with blueberries and honey baked right in.

I know I should make my own mix and I occasionally do when I have some stone ground corn meal from the Ludwig Mill. But Jiffy Mix is easy, cheap and reliable.