Easy Blueberry Muffins

I think I spoke too soon.

It is even hotter than it was before. 102°F. 102°F. Ahhhhhhhh!

And yet, I decided that today was the perfect day to whip up my second batch of blueberry muffins in the span of a week.

Still perfect. Still delicious.

Still dying in the heat.

But still worth it. Oh yes. These muffins are so good.

The recipe, which is almost identical to the one my mom and I used to use but couldn't find anymore, is from here. Yields 12 muffins.

And those 12 muffins go quickly.

INGREDIENTS
- 1 (large) egg
- ¼ cup oil
- ½ cup milk
- 1½ cups flour
- ½ cup sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 cup blueberries

Preheat your oven to 400°F and either line 12 muffin-tin cups with paper liners or spray the bottom and sides with cooking spray. (I like how the ones without paper liners get nice golden sides, but the ones with paper liners are much easier to get out of the tins.)

In a small or medium mixing bowl, beat the egg until foamy. (I don't think it matters how foamy it is, but beating until foamy should make the cupcakes slightly lighter.)

Beat in the oil and milk.

In a separate, large mixing bowl, sift together all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt).

Stir in the blueberries. I used slightly over 1 cup because I mean, come on- the more blueberries, the merrier!

(In the past, I have waited until after adding the wet ingredients to add the blueberries, but I'm guessing that putting them in before yields blueberries that burst open while baking, which is deliciously awesome.)

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the liquid ingredients.

Incorporate the wet into dry ingredients fully. (Original recipe suggests only mixing for 25 to 30 strokes, but I don't think this matters very much.)

Fill the cups in your muffin pan(s), filling each muffin cup slightly more than half-full. (I forgot to take a photo the first time, so these are from the second time I made them this week!)

Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until muffins are golden-brown and the centers test done with a toothpick.

Loosen the sides of each muffin with a spatula or toothpick and turn them out to cool.

These taste best when still warm, but the ones I didn't immediately devour were inhaled for breakfast the next day.

I'm going to say it: blueberry muffins are the best muffins.

Unf. So so good.

Orange Olive Oil Madeleines

Today, something horribly wonderful happened.

Joss Whedon (yes, the actual Joss Whedon, Avengers-Buffy-Firefly-Toy Story wait- I didn't know he wrote the screenplay for Toy Story! That makes me love him even more than I thought I possibly could!) tweeted my string ensemble's arrangement and video of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog:

How much do I love this? The most much. #cornell #culture https://t.co/hP3LNFp2Wd”
— Joss Whedon (@josswhedon) June 25, 2013

ahsdjfklaskjdhfjkadlskjdhfjdalskjdhfjkla WHAT IS AIR.

HOLY HAMMER FREEZE-RAY.

I suddenly had over 50 Youtube notifications in my inbox from within a single hour. We went from just over 4,000 views (and that was after a few "tumblr-famous" people had already reblogged our video) to over 15,000 views in less than a day. CRAZY.

And still, though the numbers seem impressive, my mind is still boggling over the fact that the venerable Joss Whedon, master of all things horrible and/or shiny in the 'verse, has seen our video, let alone that he liked it. Scratch that, loved it! A video with me in it! My quartet! Joss Whedon! Me!

Donna Noble: spirit animal

Yeah... so what does this have to do with food? Absolutely nothing.

But I did make more madeleines yesterday!

taken with my iPhone

I adapted the recipe I used previously for these lemon madeleines and came up with these orange olive oil madeleines! I actually think these are moister and fluffier than the previous ones, and now I don't have to smell that awful raw butter stench anymore! (I seriously don't know what's wrong with me, but I can't stand that smell.) Plus, I'm willing to bet that these are healthier!

Since most of the steps are identical to those of the lemon madeleine post, I won't spam you with the requisite amount of photos I usually include, and will just give you the instructions instead!

(Still freaking out about Joss Whedon.)

INGREDIENTS

- 2 eggs
- ¾ tsp vanilla extract
- ⅛ tsp salt
- ¼ cup white sugar
- ½ cup AP flour
- 1 Tbsp orange zest
- ¼ cup olive oil
- (optional) powdered sugar for decoration

NOTE: The batter using olive oil instead of melted butter is a little more liquid-y, so it makes 28 mini madeleines (which probably translates to 14 regular-sized madeleines).

• Preheat oven to 375°F. (You may choose to turn on the oven a couple of steps later, after having beat the eggs/sugar mixture and grated/zested the orange peel, but it won't hurt to preheat early so that you don't forget.)

• In a medium to large-sized mixing bowl, beat the eggs, salt, and vanilla extract at high speed until light and slightly frothy, using an electric mixer or hand mixer.

• Beating constantly, gradually add the sugar, and continue to beat the mixture on high speed until it is thick and pale, and ribbons form when you lift the beaters. (Beating for 3 to 5 minutes was sufficient time in my case.)

• Sift the flour into the rest of the mixture a third at a time, gently folding in the flour after each addition.

• Add the orange zest.

• Now, measure out ¼ cup of olive oil. This is the point at which I prepared the madeleine molds, rather than right after preheating the oven. You can use some of the ¼ cup olive oil to grease the molds, using the very tips of a basting brush. Then lightly flour each mold.

• Now, use the rest of the ¼ cup olive oil, pouring it around the edges of the batter. Quickly but gently fold the olive oil into the batter.

• Spoon your batter into the molds; the batter should slightly mound above the tops. Again, the olive oil version is more liquidy, so the mounds won't be as prominent as they would be with a butter recipe.

• Bake for 14 to 17 minutes, or until the madeleines are golden and the tops spring back when gently prodded by your fingertip. (Mine baked in 15 minutes.)

• Let the madeleines cool in the molds, for at least 15 minutes. Pop them out of the molds carefully, and let cool on a plate.

I made these late at night, so the lighting is very different from usual!

I personally think these taste best when still warm - go ahead and test "a few" after they cool off a bit :P - but they can keep for a few days, and are even good beyond that when dunked in coffee or tea! Because the olive oil ones are moister, you may want to lay them shell-side down on a dry paper towel in a container.

(Another note: the grooves/shell patterning are more noticeable when using nonstick molds, rather than silicon. Nonstick pans also give a more golden coloring to the madeleines. However, nonstick cooking ware have chemicals, or so my mom tells me, and in any case, silicon is so easy to clean up at the very end!)

I brought these to work and also gave a few to friends (shoutout to Maddie and Marza!), and they all loved them! (And then Maddie told me that one of her summer course professors was raving about our video in class.)

Brilliant end to the day! (Or should I say... horrible?) <3

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies (gluten free!)

If I could only eat one type of cookie for the rest of my life, these would be it.

Flourless peanut butter cookies. That's right. No hands flour, ma!

I first made these when one of my friends found out she had Celiac disease. I think these were the cookies that launched my recent obsession with baking.

They are definitely that good. Since then, I've made them two more times within the past couple of months. And somehow, I've managed to make things harder for myself each time. The second time I thought- wow, how good would these be with bananas? Only to find out quite vividly the next day that fresh bananas turn brown (not shown... heh) when in contact with warm surfaces.

Doh. This time, I tried to make these in 85+ °F weather. I probably would have made it unscathed (well, the cookies would have- no Amy's were harmed in the making of these cookies!) if not for the fact that I stopped every other minute to take photographs.

By then, so much moisture from the humid air had seeped into the batter that it effectively messed up the ratio of wet to dry ingredients... resulting in cookies that spread way too much in the oven.

These cookies do spread out, but the humidity doesn't help. This could probably be solved by sticking the dough into the fridge for a couple of minutes before shaping them into balls, but even the thin cookies are very delicious! And it's a great excuse to keep all the cookies to yourself. Or, you could salvage them by forming them into smaller cookies using any type of cookie cutter (or even a bottlecap could do the job)!

The original recipe comes from Averie Cooks, who also has other variations of these cookies, including a chocolate chunk version! Yummy.

INGREDIENTS

- ¾ cup white sugar
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- 1 egg *
- 1 cup peanut butter
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- (optional) brown sugar and/or white sugar for sprinkling.

*I used a large egg.



Preheat your oven to 350°F, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine all the ingredients in one bowl! It may be easier to mix the sugars, egg, and vanilla extract first, and then add in the peanut butter, but you can also add everything in one go. I don't really need to provide a step-by-step process for this, but here are some photos:

(Admittedly, I did decide to replicate these cookies because I wanted to show you the neat manicure I did the other day! That, and I've received requests for the recipe from a few friends, which makes me really happy!)

Right. So, mix all the ingredients together!

Roll your dough into small spheres, about 1-inch wide. (You could just as easily make them larger or smaller, but adjust the baking time accordingly.) Optional: you could sprinkle some brown and/or white sugar on the top of the cookies. (You can tell that these particular cookies are already starting to spread too much.)

You could leave them in spheres, which is the easiest and most fool-proof option, or you could experiment!  Many peanut butter cookies have a distinctive criss-cross patterning, so you could use a fork to create that design.

(Lightly press the tines into the cookie dough, and drag it back and forth to deepen the grooves. You don't want the cookies to flatten out too much, because as I mentioned, they do tend to spread during baking.)

Or, you might try this cute button design that I randomly decided to make!

Press down lightly on the cookie to make a slightly flatter (plateau!) top.

I then used a cap from a bottle of water to create the circle.

Then use a toothpick to create four little circles!

(These looked really cute the first time I made them.)

Bake for 10 minutes, but keep an eye on the cookies. These bake very quickly, and could go from raw to burnt in a matter of a few extra minutes.

Mine usually bake quite well when I leave them in for 12 minutes, with a slight crisp to the bottom of the cookies, 10 minutes for softer, chewier cookies. I only left them in for 10 minutes this time, because by the time I stopped watching Confederations Cup coverage to check on the cookies, they had already spread out, and I decided to nip that in the bud the best I could.

I was just going to show you photos from the last time that I made these...

But I don't give up so easily! I realized that I had a nice heart-shaped cookie cutter, and since these cookies are quite soft, even after cooling for 20 minutes, they were nicely transformed into cute little hearts!

Perfect little snacks, and I just so happened to go out for dinner with a couple that work with my mom that just got engaged (that sentence had too many clauses, didn't it...), so it all worked out perfectly!

(Plus, the scraps from the cookie-cutting endeavor are great for snacking. Shh, don't tell my mom where I'm planning to hide the cookie container!)