Cheddar-Apple Muffins

 Charley The Muffin Man

Muffin #1 - Cheddar-Apple Muffins

       So, when I adopted my pup from the SPCA of Texas in Dallas, in January, his shelter name was Muffin. However, he is most definitely not a "Muffin". His name is Charley and his very, first name is "Charley The Muffin Man". His Instagram page his @charleythemuffinman. This series of muffin recipes are for him. This recipe is in one of my favorite cookbooks. The Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook published in 1996. It is one of the first cookbooks which I bought for myself. I used Colby-Jack cheese in lieu of plain cheddar, because that's what I had. I couldn't really taste the cheese in these muffins and I wished there was more flavor. Consider adding a bit of cinnamon or nutmeg or serving with cinnamon-sugar sprinkled on top. That said, I liked these muffins; they had a good texture. Try them and let me know what you think. Modification(s) in italics. 

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup finely shredded cheddar or Colby-Jack cheese (2oz)

1/3 cup quick-cooking rolled oats

2 tbsps sugar

2 1/2 tsps baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 beaten egg

3/4 cup milk

1/3 cup cooking oil

3/4 cup finely chopped, pealed apple

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease twelve large muffin cups (2 1/2-inch muffin cups) and set aside. In a medium bowl, combine flour, cheese, rolled oats, sugar, baking powder and salt. Make a well in the center of the dry mixture and set aside. In a separate medium-sized bowl, mix together the egg, milk and oil. Mix liquid mixture into the dry mixture. Stir until combined; the batter should be a little lumpy. Spoon mixture into muffin cups so that they are about 2/3 full. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until golden. Cool on a wire rack for five minutes and remove from pan. Serve warm with butter and cinnamon-sugar if desired. 

Charley The Muffin Man and 
Cheddar-Apple Muffins

Appetizer #17 - Toasty Cheese Crackers

 The Year of Appetizers

Appetizer #17 - Toasty Cheese Crackers

    My first comment is that the recipe says you can make about six dozen crackers with this recipe. I did not get near that many. This recipe comes to us from The Quaker Oats Wholegrain Cookbook published in 1978. This little cookbook has a lot of recipes that I want to try. For example they have Several "Add-A-Crunch" mixes that can be used how you like or in recipes they are included in.  Some of them would be awesome over plain, non-fat yogurt.  If you're watching your sugar, you could try making some of these with Stevia or other sugar substitutes.  Several recipes have special notations that show they are simple enough for kids to make (with the appropriate adult supervision of course).  This recipe is one of those. I'll show my modification in italics. 

    I am going to admit that this is definitely not my favorite appetizer that I've made, even with the addition I made of chipotle seasoning. I don't want this to deter you from trying it though! I didn't add a lot of chipotle seasoning, so it ended up not being really noticeable, but try it and add more if you like it. You could also experiment with adding your favorite seasoning or you could try the cookbook suggestions of oregano or basil.  

Ingredients:

2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese (I used Monterrey-Jack)

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 cup softened butter or margarine

3 tbsps water

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 chipotle pepper seasoning (optional) or try your favorite seasoning

1 cup uncooked quick or old fashioned (Quaker Oats or whatever your favorite brand is)

Directions:

Mix together cheeses, butter and water until thoroughly combined. Add flour and salt and mix well. Stir in oats.  I ended up using plastic disposable gloves to make sure I got everything mixed together. Shape dough into a 12-inch log. Wrap securely and refrigerate for four hours. Remove from the refrigerator and cut into 1/8 or 1/4" slices and place on a lightly greased baking sheet. Flatten slightly. My slices were pretty stiff and I couldn't flatten, so I just left them as is. Bake in an oven pre-heated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 8 to 10 minutes or until the edges are lightly golden brown.  Remove from the oven and immediately remove from the baking sheet. Cool on a wire rack. Serve plain or add a dollop of salsa, savory dip or even pizza sauce.

Toasty Cheese Crackers

McGregor Cake

 McGregor Cake

I've got a bonus recipe for you and boy am I glad I made it.  This cake came out better than I'd hoped. It is moist, and sweet, but not too sweet. You have a little crunch from the pecans and chewiness of the coconut. It is sooooo good.  Don't walk, run, and make this cake! I found this recipe while looking for a recipe to use for my #FiftyTwoInTwentyTwo project.  The recipe is in a thin, paper, recipe pamphlet, produced by Crisco Oil, in 1965. There's a little bit of prep work, but it is so worth it. Be careful when you get to the broiling part. I either had the rack too close to the top and/or just plumb broiled it for too long. I checked on my pan about half-way through the final step and the top was burning! I removed the pan and frantically scraped off the topping and managed to save the cake. Luckily I had enough ingredients to re-do the toppings and when I put my pan back in to broil, I watched it really closely and I think I just broiled for two minutes.  

Cake Ingredients:

1 cup old-fashioned oats

1 1/2 cups boiling water

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup light brown sugar

1/2 cup Crisco Oil (or other vegetable oil; I actually used canola oil and it was just fine)

2 eggs

1 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup chopped pecans

Frosting Ingredients:

1/4 cup soft butter or margarine (I used butter and softened it in the microwave)

1/2 cup light brown sugar

1/4 cup evaporated milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup chopped pecans

1/2 cup flaked coconut

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9x13x2 inch pan. Add boiling water to oats in a bowl and let stand for 15 minutes. Thoroughly combine sugar, oil and eggs. Stir in the oatmeal. Sift dry ingredients and add to the batter, followed by 1/2 cup of the chopped pecans. Spread the batter into your prepared pan and bake for 30 to 5 minutes. You can use a toothpick to help ensure the cake is done. For the frosting, combine butter/margarine, 1/2 cup brown sugar, evaporated milk, pecans and coconut. Immediately spread with the frosting and broil for 3 to 5 minutes, until lightly browned. 

McGregor Cake

McGregor Cake

The artwork on the cover page of the Crisco Oil recipe pamphlet

Week 42 - Fruit & Oat Squares

 Fruit & Oat Squares

Week 42 of 52

Dessert #6

    This yummy recipe comes from Best Loved Cookies published in 2000.  You can use your favorite flavor fruit preserves and I used peach preserves.  I liked that in this recipe, there aren't a lot of ingredients and it was pretty easy to make. This recipe makes 12 to 16 servings, depending how large you cut them.  Notes in italics.

Ingredients: 

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup uncooked quick oats

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/3 cup margarine or butter, melted (I used unsalted butter)

3/4 cup apricot, cherry, peach, or other fruit flavor preserves

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9-inch square pan. I used cooking spray as the directions recommended in the book, but if you lightly grease with butter or margarine, that's just fine. Combine your dry ingredients in a bowl, mixing well. Mix in margarine/butter with a fork until crumbly. Reserve 3/4 cup of the crumb mixture (for the topping). Press the remaining crumb mixture into the bottom of your greased pan. Bake 5 to 7 minutes, until lightly browned. Spread preserves over the crust and sprinkle the reserved crumble mix over top. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown. Cool completely. You can set the pan on top of a cookie rack, to help it cool quicker (what I normally do).

Fruit & Oat Squares

Fruit & Oat Squares
Ready to Enjoy!

Fruit & Honey Candy

 FRUIT & HONEY CANDY

    Okay, so I found the recipe for this candy tucked into the Laurel (Iowa) Centennial Cookbook (1881-1981).  The Laurel Centennial Cookbook has multiple recipes submitted from members of my family and I inherited this copy by my Aunt this past year. I'm very, proud of the fact that on both sides of my family, I have ancestors who founded or co-founders of towns, so it is cool to have this cookbook from a town which some of my ancestors helped to found. This recipe had been cut out of a magazine in 1989/1990.  I love when I can date clippings that I find tucked into cookbooks and this clipping was for a recipe from Sue Bee Honey and had a coupon for .15 cents off a bottle of Sue Bee Honey.  It expired on 02/28/1990. 

    This isn't something I'd ordinarily make, but I wanted to try my hand at something healthy and something different.  This recipe fit the bill on both fronts.  Reading the recipe, I couldn't figure out what they meant by "fruit bits", so I tweeted the question to Sue Bee Honey (@SueBeeUSA) and they responded pretty quickly.  Some fine person at Sue Bee Honey had actually researched this on my behalf and provided the answer.  That answer was that the Sun-Maid Fruit Company, famous for their raisins (that's how I know them) made/makes a product called "fruit bits".  The fruit bits are exactly what they sound like. Little bits of mixed dried fruits.  I couldn't find any, so that was one of the dried fruits I ordered off of Amazon; I just ended up with a different brand, because I couldn't find the Sun-Maid brand. I also ordered dried apricots, apples and peaches in addition to a large bottle of Sue Bee Honey. The other ingredients are orange extract, quick oats (Um, I just got regular oats and it seemed to work fine) and walnuts.  

    Honestly, this was a little time consuming to make, mostly because the food processor I have is small and I could not fit all of the ingredients in it, so I had to process all the fruits in batches and then I used my really small one to finely chop the walnuts.  I also processed the oats, to make the pieces smaller and I liked how it turned out, with some not all of the pieces totally ground up as I didn't want all of the oats in large pieces.  One slight hiccup which really didn't matter in the end was that the bag of mixed fruit I ordered was large pieces, not bits.  I hadn't realized it, but no biggie. They were going to get chopped up anyhow. I simply cut up those pieces a little smaller, before processing with the other dried fruits. Since my food processor was not large enough to process the "ton" of fruit, nuts and oats, after I processed each smaller batch of mixed fruits, I put the fruit in a large mixing bowl. I mixed the honey and orange extract in the food processor with the fruits.  I hand mixed in the oats and finely chopped walnuts with a wooden spoon, making sure that all the ingredients were incorporated.  The recipe says to process the nuts and some of the walnuts in the food processor, but mixing them in with the wooden spoon, worked just fine. 

    I'd ordered mini-baking cups, so I set out a bunch of those, grabbed my small cookie scoop and started scooping balls.  The recipe only calls for 7oz of walnut pieces, divided, but I used more than the 1 cup you set aside for rolling the balls in. There are so many balls that I had to crush up some more nuts.  You can do this to taste, like I did. I wanted to ensure I had a decent amount of crushed walnuts on the outside of the balls. Using my small cookie scoop was an excellent decision.  It made the perfect size ball. The recipe says the yield is approximately 7 dozen and I made 83/84 balls.  I can't remember if I counted before I sampled one. 

    What did I like about this recipe? I like that it is a healthy recipe with no added sugar besides what is naturally in the honey and dried fruits. I thought it tasted pretty good, considering it's not what I normally would reach for as a treat.  I liked that it is something that I can share with my neighbors & friends who may follow certain food restrictions, specifically no dairy or certain animal products. Would I make this again?  I think so. When after COVID restrictions are lifted and life can get more back to normal, I would make this for my church ladies group annual fund-raiser (canceled this year because of COVID). I think this healthy alternative might do well with the crowd at my church.  

    A picture of the recipe is attached below. If you try this out, feel free to let me know how you like it.