Review: Musselman’s Natural Apple Sauce and the NBCF Fight Breast Cancer‏

Musselman’s promotion this January is to help fight breast cancer. To start the year off with a giving spirit, they're donating ten cents to the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) for every package of Musselman’s Natural Apple Sauce purchased in the month of January. The NBCF is dedicated to raising awareness of breast cancer through education and by providing mammograms for those in need.

Musselman’s sent us a 48 oz Natural Apple Sauce in their pink ribbon package and a few recipes that are perfect for the winter season, such as Craig’s Apple Pork Chops, Good Morning Muffins, Apple Raisin Crumb Pie, Easy Apple Harvest Cake and Apple Sauce Meatloaf.

With the colder winter weather here, they want to help you get cozy and add a serving of fruit to some of the most popular comfort foods (made with our apple sauce!) that not only feed your hunger, but can also help feed hope for those affected by breast cancer.

I made their Good Morning Muffins, and believe me when I say they were a hit! Even Mr. liked them. They are so soft and moist with a delicious apple flavor and hint of cinnamon. This recipe is a keeper!!



Good Morning Muffins from their site

•6 tablespoons butter

•1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

•1 teaspoon baking powder

•1/2 teaspoon baking soda

•1 teaspoon cinnamon

•1/2 teaspoon salt

•2 eggs

•2/3 cup brown sugar

•1 1/2 cups MUSSELMAN'S Natural Apple Sauce

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with bake cups and set aside. In a small microwave-safe bowl, melt the butter on high for about 30 to 60 seconds; set aside to cool slightly.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt into a large mixing bowl. In another large bowl, whisk together the eggs and brown sugar. Stir in the applesauce and melted butter until the mixture is smooth. Pour the apple mixture over the flour mixture. Mix with a wooden spoon until combined and you can't see any traces of flour.

Fill the bake cups about two-thirds full with batter. Bake for 20 minutes or until light brown.

Servings: 12

Cooking Time: 20 minutes



I wrote this review for "Mommy? I'm Hungry!" about Musselman’s Apple Sauce. I received free product to review and keep as compensation for my honest opinion of the product. All opinions for this review are that of myself & family. Info source courtesy of PR. Thanks again Musselman's!

enjoy,

Tuesdays with Dorie: Allspice Crumb Muffins

Erin of Prudence Pennywise (great blog!) selected Sweet Potato Biscuits for her week at TWD. When I first heard of these, i knew I wanted to have them with a roasted chicken dinner. Sweet potatoes/yams are a big weakness in our family, yay for Thanksgiving coming soon!!

What am I thinking? Did you see what I did? I'm sitting here writing this week's TWD muffin post, thinking of next week's* TWD and started writing it! But then went right into the muffin post as below! Silly!! I think because I am making them for dinner tonight, I have them on the brain! lol

From Mommy I'm Hungry

This week's TWD comes from Kayte of Grandma’s Kitchen Table, Allspice Crumb Muffins. You'll want to check out her blog for this recipe!

I wasn't sure if I wanted to make these or not. I am not a huge fan of warm spices. Being such an easy recipe, with everything already in the cupboards, I decided why not? I whipped these up for breakfast one morning, it's such an easy recipe. The Allspice was great in these, not overpowering at all. I added the lemon zest, but you'd never know it, I couldn't taste it. Since I used my ice cream scooper to scoop the batter into the muffin pan, I got only 10 instead of the 12 she mentioned. Well, next time I'll scoop them smaller because they overflowed. I had lots of crumb topping left over too, so into the freezer the leftovers went for another muffin morning. Like I said, these are great! I will be making them again. Maybe next time I'll add in some chopped pecans! They reminded me so much of another favorite morning treat I make, these Sugar Doughnut Muffins!

From Mommy I'm Hungry

Next week's TWD: Sweet Potato Muffins*

enjoy,

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Roasted Banana Muffins

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Roasted Banana Muffins
adapted from Aggie's Kitchen

Roasted Bananas
6 large ripe bananas, sliced into halves
3 TBL cold butter, cut into pieces
2 TBL brown sugar

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Place sliced bananas into a baking dish. Place butter evenly over bananas and sprinkle brown sugar on top. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden and bubbly. Remove and let cool for 10 minutes. Dice or mash for recipe.
-Picky Palate




6 ripe and roasted bananas (how to above)
4 large eggs
1 ½ C unbleached all-purpose flour
1 ½ C whole wheat flour
1 1/4 C granulated sugar
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 C peanut butter
2 C mini chocolate chips

For topping
2 Tbsp. turbinado sugar
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray muffin pans.
In a medium mixing bowl, mash the bananas or dice them. Add the eggs, sugar and vanilla and stir well to combine. Add the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and stir to mix. Add chocolate chips and peanut butter, and stir to combine. Scoop the batter into the prepared pans, and set aside.
In a small bowl, stir together the topping ingredients. Sprinkle the mixture evenly over the batter in the pan.
Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in pans for 5 minutes, transfer to wire rack.

enjoy,

Sugar Doughnut Muffins

These are reminiscent of my days working in a bakery, let me share with you... Baking doughnuts and rolling them in sugar or icing with chocolate, plain or maple icing at only 5 in the morning! Ahh those were my younger days. lol. After the doughnuts, we'd either start cake orders or get the breads going. I worked in a small town grocery store/deli/bakery. I started in the deli first, where we shared this room (below) and was later promoted to the bakery. We had this huge BOOS block table, and the deli would get just this little corner to use for prep, lol. There were plenty of good times there. The gal I'm with (that's me in the red), is the reason behind my username. We dubbed ourselves Luv Bug, after some old country song by George Strait, "Lovebug" we heard EVERY morning while working. I've since gone on to other jobs, married, had 3 kids and moved a few times. She is still there, doing awesome cakes! When we went back home to visit once, I snuck in to surprise her but it was after hours, so I left her a note that said "Hi Luv Bug!" and she knew I was around!



I love a good sugared doughnut twist just as much as a jelly filled one. It didn't take much decision to want to whip these little gems up, or time at all! They were done baking at 18 minutes. For me it was about 25 minutes from start to finish. Perfect for a weekend morning treat.

3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 cup canola oil
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp butter, melted
1/2 cup granulated sugar, for rolling (I added a little cinnamon too)

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly grease a muffin tin with non stick cooking spray.
In a large bowl, beat together sugar and egg until light in color.
In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg.
Pour into egg mixture and stir to combine.
Pour in oil, milk and vanilla extract.
Divide batter evenly into 10 muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.
While muffins are baking, melt butter and pour remaining sugar into a small bowl. When muffins are done and still warm, lightly brush the top of each with some melted butter, remove from the pan and roll in sugar. Cool on a wire rack. Makes 10 muffins.

-adapted from Baking Bites

(about the shapes, while baking they began to sink in the middles, then looked like a little hole in the middle (like a doughnut!), but then they puffed up near the end leaving that cute edge.)






enjoy,

Buttermilk Blueberry Muffins

This is the continuation of my Breakfast with the Bloggers. I saw these Buttermilk Blueberry Muffins at The Daily Blonde's blog and since I had everything on hand I had to make them! I love good personal reviews (and good photos of the food), entices me to want to make them even more. As I hope my blog does the same for you! :) These were great! I had thought of using lemon zest instead, but remember I had some orange zest in the freezer so I stuck with what was written. I used frozen blueberries, and they gave me very blue-berry muffins!

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
Zest of one orange
1 large egg, lightly beaten
3/4 cup buttermilk
2/3 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups fresh blueberries

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
Position rack in center of oven. Spray regular size muffin pans with a non stick cooking spray. Set aside.

In a large measuring cup or bowl whisk together the egg, buttermilk, oil, and vanilla extract. In another large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and orange zest. Gently fold in the berries.
With a rubber spatula fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir only until the ingredients are combined. Do not over mix the batter or tough muffins will result.

Fill each muffin cup almost full of batter, using an ice cream scoop. Place in the oven and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean, about 15-20 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool for about 5 minutes before removing from pan. Makes 14 regular size muffins.

(TIP: a regular size ice cream scoop is the perfect size for muffins!)

Fresh Lime & Lemons

(TIP: freeze citrus zest in their juice for later use! Place in baggies when frozen.)

*See these also at Just Baking!

enjoy,

Tuesdays with Dorie: Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins

This week's recipe was chosen by Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake, Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins. We all love cornbread here, so this was definitely a go! I love my cornbread sweet with honey and butter. I also like to add corn to it. Making these more savory with the cilantro, chili and peppers was a great idea. They came out great. I only baked mine for about 15 minutes and that was perfect.

*I have to come back here and be honest, my review has changed since the one I ate after it was just baked, lol. We ate these later for dinner, and they just crumbled away. Also the chili flavor seemed off to me, maybe I wasn't used to it being in my cornbread. I think I'll stick to my Jiffy corn bread and add these veggies to that. :)

So sorry Dorie.

Whole Wheat Banana Crumb Muffins

I've had this bookmarked and decided to whip these up. Smitten Kitchen made hers as Whole Wheat Apple Muffins, but I made ours as whole wheat banana crumb muffins. These were super moist day 2. They were gobbled up fast!

1 cup (4 ounces) whole wheat flour
1 cup (4 1/4 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 cup (1 stick, 4 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) granulated sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed*
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 cup (8 ounces) buttermilk
3-5 bananas, chopped* (depending how much banana you want)
crumb topping*

Preheat the oven to 450°F. Grease and flour an 18 cup muffin tin and set aside.
Mix together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon, and set aside. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and add the granulated sugar and 1/4 cup of the brown sugar. Beat until fluffy. Add the egg and mix well; stop once to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl. Mix in the buttermilk gently. (If you over-mix, the buttermilk will cause the mixture to curdle.) Stir in the dry ingredients and fold in the apple chunks (or bananas).

Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups, sprinkling the remaining 1/4 cup brown sugar on top (or crumb topping). Bake for 10 minutes, turn the heat down to 400°F, and bake for an additional 5 to 10 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool the muffins for 5 minutes in the tin, then turn them out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

The crumb topping I found here

¼ cup pecans (ground)
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup packed brown sugar
pinch of salt
4 tablespoons butter, cold, cubed

In a food processor, grind ¼ cup of almonds. Add the flour, brown sugar and salt, and pulse until blended. Add the butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. (you will have leftovers, just keep stored in the freezer for next use)

I saw over at Pinch My Salt, she would be a special guest on Twitter's GNO Tuesday night, so I signed up to chat, and got so lost! lol. I rarely use Twitter, but thought it'd be nice to meet other foodies and Twitterers. Then mommy duties were calling so soon and I couldn't hang around to talk about Holiday recipes and such. So if you were there in GNO, HI, sorry I couldn't reall ymeet you! I'll try to get in there every week to check it out.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

I love Fall. The cooler weather, the leaves turning colors, soups and stews and just getting ready for all the Holiday baking that's to come. I mark these muffins as my first recipe of the fall season. I love pumpkin anything, so when I came across this, I decided I'd share them with you. It reminds me of a pumpkin roll and they sure make your home smell wonderful.

Muffins:

3 cups flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp ground cloves

4 tsp pumpkin pie spice*

Pinch of cardamom

1 tsp salt

1 tsp soda

4 eggs

2 cups sugar

2 cups cooked or canned pumpkin

1 ¼ cups vegetable oil

Cream Cheese Filling

6 ounces cream cheese, softened

2 Tablespoons sugar

2 Tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Crumb Topping

1 cup all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons light brown sugar

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch of salt

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350. To make the cream cheese filling, beat cream cheese, sugar, milk, and vanilla until smooth. Set aside.

Make the crumb topping: In a medium bowl, combine the flour with the brown sugar, granulated sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir in the melted butter, then pinch the mixture until it forms pea-size clumps. Set aside.

Mix muffin ingredients together except cream cheese filling. Fill muffin tins (greased or paper cups) 3/4 full. Put 1-2 tsp cream cheese filling in each muffin and lightly swirl (I used a plastic bag snipped as a pastry bag to pipe it in). Top with 1 generous tablespoon of topping.

Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean from the muffin. Let cool in pans for 5 minutes, then remove to racks to cool completely. Makes 24 muffins.

This muffin recipe comes from Sheila of Musings of a Mommy. I used a cream cheese filling I had found some years ago and the crumb topping comes from Food & Wine. I adapted her recipe to accommodate this recipe. I made 12 regular muffins and 5 jumbo muffins with this recpe. See this recipe at Just Baking also!

*The ingredients of Pumpkin Pie Spice are: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and allspice. If you don't have this on hand, you can make your own!

Also did you know that a pumpkin is a fruit AND a vegetable!

so my swirling didn't work too great, but this IS the best part of the muffin!

Strawberry Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

The Muffin/Bread Man has been around quite a bit lately. I don't mind, he leaves me with some yummy carbs that everyone enjoys! I happen to know that he'll be sticking around too.
I used a basic anything-goes-muffin base, and then tossed in a diced banana, mashed strawberries and chocolate chips. I changed it up a little from the original recipe, and these turned out fabulous! Who doesn't love strawberry-banana, chocolate & strawberries, or chocolate & bananas flavors? You get them all in these! This recipe gave me 12 regular muffins and 1 mini loaf.


2 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 cup milk
1/4 cup canola oil
1 banana, diced
3/4 cup mashed strawberries
1/2 cup chocolate chips


Preheat oven to 400'.
Stir together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugars in a large bowl. In a small bowl beat egg with a fork. Stir in milk and oil. Pour all at once into the the flour mixture. Mix quickly and lightly with a fork until moistened, but do not over beat. The batter will be lumpy. Gently fold in the fruits and chocolate chips. Pour the batter into paper lined muffin pan cups. Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden.

Banana Bran and Raisin Muffins

Looking for a healthier muffin to bake, I opted for some sort of a bran muffin. I came across a few I wanted to try, but didn’t have all the ingredients on hand. I did have some bananas that needed to be used, so these were perfect! I liked the fact that these had diced bananas instead of mashed in them. I also used canola oil instead of vegetable. The kids loved these!

2 cups Kellogg’s All-Bran cereal
1-1/4 cups milk
1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 banana, cut into small chunks
1/2 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray muffin tin with cooking spray or line with cupcake papers.
In a large mixing bowl, combine bran cereal and milk. Let stand for about 2 minutes to soften the cereal.
Stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Set aside.
Into the softened bran mix stir the egg and oil. Beat well. Stir in the banana and raisins. Add the flour mixture, stirring only until combined. Divide the batter evenly into 12 muffin cups.
Bake about 20 minutes or until golden brown. Best served warm.

~a recipe found at cookie baker lynn and also written about at Just Baking.

sneaky fingers!