The week of May 5th in Review

Spring flowers are blooming, and the woodlands are beginning to show colour I cannot wait for the first Trillium's to appear in our area.

The past week  presented us in Southern Ontario with frosty mornings and warmer days.

Sunday was full of music with singing at the morning service and a Sunday night hymn sing.  I have fond childhood memories of going to hymn sings with Aunt Marjorie.

There was also great food with a finger good potluck that followed.

We took Banana Cupcakes using up the last of the frozen bananas.  This is another recipe of Aunt Marjorie’s and I have included the recipe for you to enjoy.

Banana Cupcakes

Ingredients:

3 bananas mashed

1 cup mayonnaise

1 cup sugar

2 cups flower

2 teaspoons baking soda

Directions:

Mix together in order listed and bake at 350F for 35 minutes or until done.

Gentle yoga has become a big part of our self care routine.  Both Paul and I are becoming aware of how important increasing our flexibility is as we age (I am not saying we are old!)

Standing in warrior 1 and looking out the studio window

We enjoy spending the early part of the week with our grandchildren. 

 The horse barn was an interesting place to be this week with lots of animal activity.

Our youngest granddaughter finished her semi formal dress it looks wonderful on her.

We were able to get into our garden twice this week and set up a bird feeder so that we can enjoy bird watching from our front window.

And twice this week we ate out with friends.

A busy week full of joy.

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2019 twosnydergirls

Coffee Cake Muffins

One of the best things about long distance travel is having a picnic hamper packed full of homemade comfort food and this trip we are going to combined our travel coffee with homemade Sour Cream Coffee Cake Muffins.

You might ask why sour cream well like most recipes that come from Grandma Snyder’s kitchen the sour cream was in the refrigerator needing to be used before we leave for a month.

Great Great Grandma Snyder used to make coffee cake and sell it at the local market and this muffin recipe is an adaptation of that recipe.

Sour Cream Coffee Cake Muffins

Ingredients

½ cup butter or margarine

1 cup white sugar

2 eggs

1 cup sour cream

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

Pinch of salt

2 tsp. cinnamon

1 cup chopped nuts (almonds and peacans)

Brown sugar to sprinkle on top of each muffin

Directions:

Cream together the first 5 ingredients

In a separate bowl shift together the remaining ingredients except for the nuts and brown sugar

Add the dry ingredients, chopped nuts to the creamed sugar and butter mix well

Fill well greased muffins tins ¾ full and sprinkle each muffin with brown sugar

Bake at 350 F for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean

This recipe makes 12 large muffins

From Our Table to Yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2018 twosnydergirls

Blueberry Muffins

The anticipation of camping has brought a renewed interest in cooking in our cast iron cookware and old family recipes easily adapted to open fire, or hot plate.

When we travel it is finding baking treats that seem to be the hardest, from bakeries portion sizes are too large, prepackaged in grocery stores too high is fat and sugar.

Blueberry Muffins is where we started knowing that we always carry blueberries either fresh or frozen with us and finding way to use them up before they spoil a travelling necessity.

Thus today we offer

Blueberry Muffins

Ingredients:

2 Tbsp. coconut oil

2 Tbsp. honey

1 egg

½ tsp vanilla

¾ cup milk (we use almond milk)

2 cups flour

3 tsp. baking powder

¼ tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/3 cup of blueberries

Directions:

1. Mix together oil, honey, egg, vanilla and milk.

2. Shift together flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon

3. Combine the dry ingredients into the wet add the blueberries last.

4. Bake at 400 F for 20 minutes.

Cooking with cast iron

Preheat the cast iron baking pan and add the muffin batter to the hot pan.  If your baking pan can fit within a larger cast iron pan bake the muffins over hot coals banking the lid of the larger pan with hot coals and checking half way through the baking time.

Or

Bake in an oven.

From our table to yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2017 twosnydergirls

Peanut Butter and Jam Oatmeal Muffins

This week we are offering another recipe that found its origins in the need to use up ingredients that were about to go beyond their best before date: peanut butter and sour cream.  

We have never liked peanut soup so that was out of the question.

We leave for vacation this week and travelling with homemade muffins would be nice so it was to Great Grandma Audrey’s recipes we went and here we found a recipe for Sour Cream and Oatmeal muffins.  

We then substituted peanut butter for butter and where goes peanut butter so goes jam.  Thus we added a dollop of black current jam to the centre of each muffin.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 cup sour cream
• 2/3 cup peanut butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• 1 cup brown sugar firmly packed
• 1 cup flour
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• Jam of your choice

Directions:

1. Mix together the oats, peanut butter, sour cream, eggs and sugar.
2. In a separate bowl mix the dry ingredients
3. Add the dry ingredients to the peanut butter mixture
4. In well greased muffins tin fill ½ full with batter then add a dollop of jam and fill to top with batter.
5. Bake at 375°F for 30 minutes.

Note: The jam in the middle of the muffins retains the heat of cooking so let the muffins cool completely prior to eating or you may have a burnt tongue. 

Yep this is experience talking. 😊

From Our Table to Yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2017 twonsnydergirls

Beet Muffins

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2017 twosnydergirls

Clementine Cornmeal Muffins

Today’s recipe finds it’s origins in our household having too many clementines on hand after the Christmas holidays.

We had no idea what to do with the two dozen clementines gracing our kitchen cupboard and so we went to Pinterest.  Here we found numerous recipes for Clementine Cake and they all started with boiling the clementines whole and pureeing the fruit whole.

We pick a recipe and found the cake very moist, full of flavour and both of us through that clementine puree would work well in a cornmeal muffin, thus today recipe.

Making Clementine Puree.

Cut the stems off the clementines and boil in water for 30 to 40 minutes.  Drain the water and allow the clementines to cool until they are just warm to the touch.  Cut the clementines into pieces that work well in your food processor.  Process the clementines until you have a fine Puree.  Note: we like a bit of peel in our food so we left a few larger pieces of peel.  Divide the Puree into 1 cup contains and freeze or use immediately.

We have frozen our clementine puree in one cup amounts and find that it works just as well as fresh boiled clementine puree.

We are also going to try the puree instead of apple sauce in other recipes as well.

Clementine Corn Meal Muffins

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 heaping cup clementine puree
• 2 tablespoons milk

Directions:

1. Mix all dry ingredients together
2. Mix all wet ingredients together
3. Blend the wet ingredients into the dry
4. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until a knife comes out clean and the muffins have started to brown.

From Our Table to Yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2016 twosnydergirls

Morning Glory Muffins Gluten Free

Cooking with children is a wonderful way of teaching them to give back to their community, their social and religious groups. 

A dear senior member of our small church past away this week and there was a call from the pulpit for people to make sandwiches and cupcakes or muffins for the funeral meal.

Emily and Ruth did not know this member however had heard his name spoken in our home whenever we played crokinole a game much loved by Israel. 

What happened to him was their first response and when we had answered this question to their satisfaction we asked if they wanted to contribute the make of the funeral meal.

So on the Sunday before Christmas we found ourselves in the kitchen making Morning Glory Muffins (gluten free) with our granddaughters.

This is a recipe that we have been making since the early 1980’s and is our go to recipe when the call is given for muffins.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups gluten free flour (½ cup almond flour, ½ cup rice flour, ½ cup coconut flour, ½ cup tapioca flour, ½ teaspoon xanthan gum)
• 1 white sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• ½ teaspoons salt
• 2 cups grated carrots
• ½ cup raisins
• ½ cup roughly crushed nuts, we used pecans
• ½ cup shredded coconut
• 1 apple cored and grated
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup coconut oil melted
• 2 teaspoons vanilla

Directions:

1. In a large bowl shift together the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt
2. In a separate bowl mix together the eggs, oil, and vanilla once fully combined add this to the flour with the carrots, raisins, nuts, coconut, and apple.  Mix well.
3. Spoon the batter into muffin cups or a well-greased muffin pan.
4. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes at 350 degrees F.
5. This recipe make 2 dozen small muffins or 14 large muffins.

Ruth enjoyed crushing those nuts way too much :)

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2015 twosnydergirls

Beet Muffins

Our granddaughters love looking through the old scrapbook cuttings and handwritten recipes that have been handed down to us over the years.  We have become the repository for these well used scrapbooks, boxes and notebooks from both sides of the family and today's recipe comes from this treasure trove of recipes.

What is unique about this recipe is that you use shredded beets and the taste is wonderful, much like a Morning Glory Muffin with just a hint of beet flavour.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup wheat germ
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt
• 5 eggs
• 1 cup oil
• 3 cups shredded beets
• 1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 cup shredded coconut
• 2 tsp baking soda

Directions:

1. Mix all of your dry ingredients together (flour, wheat germ, sugar,cinnamon, salt, soda, raisin, walnuts, coconut)
2. Mix all of the wet ingredients together (eggs, oil, beets)
3. Slowing pour the wet into the dry mixing as you pour
4. Spoon into muffin tins
5. Bake at 350 F for approx 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean

From Our Table to Yours

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2015 twosnydergirls

Veggie & Cheese Pudding Muffins

A Tasty Mistake

The task was to develop a recipe for a savory pancake filled with chopped vegetables and sharp cheddar goat cheese.  A pancake that could be taken in a lunch bag and eaten either hot or cold.

So it was I took 1 cup of my own gluten free flour mix and added 2 cups of chopped vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots, 1 cup of shredded cheese, ¼ teaspoon garlic salt and 1 cup of almond milk.  And as often happens to me when I am making pancakes I had to add about ¼ cup of water to create a pourable batter.  

 Happy with my experiment so far I poured the batter into a hot frying pan greased with coconut oil the cheese stuck to the frying pan – this batter would not make pancakes!

I was not going to waste the batter what could I do … and there sitting in the drying rack was the answer the silicone non-stick muffin pan.  The batter poured easily and I preheated the oven to 375 F and once the muffins were in the oven I set the timer to 30 minutes.  30 minutes later the muffins were still uncooked 15 more minutes and still the muffins were too moist in the centre.

It was too late now and I needed to go to bed so I turned off the oven and left the muffins in the cooling muffins.  If they are ruined well not all cooking experiments work out!

http://www.morningtondairy.com/

The next morning resolved to find a disaster in the oven I was surprised to find a tasty muffins that had a wet texture similar to a Yorkshire pudding.  Paul compared the taste to that of a vegetable potpie and he asked that I add a good garlic sausage to a few next time.   We both agreed that the result was not a disaster.

Today I had three of the muffins heated with a mild salsa on top the result was very tasty.

Ingredients:

1 cup of gluten free flour mix (use ½ of this, 1 cup almond flour, ½ cup rice flour

½ cup tapioca starch, ¼ cup coconut flour, tsp xanthan gum, 2 tsp baking powder)

2 cups of chopped vegetables, broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots,

1 cup of shredded cheese,

¼ teaspoon garlic salt

1 cup of almond milk or less if you want less of a Yorkshire pudding texture

Directions:

Mix all the ingredients together and pour into your muffin pan bake at 375 F for 60 minutes.

And I Still Need Help! 

How do you add cheese to pancake patter so that it will not stick to the frying pan?

Grandma Snyder

©2013-2014 twosnydergirls