Good Morning Muffins, adapted from The Pioneer Woman

On most weekends, I like to make egg dishes for breakfast.  Thanks to Eggland's Best, I've been supplied with one year's worth of eggs! This morning, I had an urge to bake muffins. I was up earlier than usual, and I decided it was time to make a recipe that I bookmarked from one of my favorite food blogs-- The Pioneer Woman.  I assume that most of you food bloggers have visited her blog. If not, I'd do that when you have a few hours to spend. Ree Drummond is funny, and a very good writer. She takes beautiful photos. Her recipes are mostly "comfort food" and some of them are bathroom scale busters. This recipe has a couple of  "indulgence's-- one stick of butter and a sugary topping.  That's my kind of treat! What I decided I would not use is one of Ree's original ingredients-- shortening.  The orange marmalade and fresh squeezed orange juice is what most intrigued me about this recipe.  Plus, my family loves muffins.  I especially love them with my morning paper and a cup of freshly brewed dark roast coffee.  Muffins take about 10-15 minutes to prepare, and take less than 20 minutes to bake and you don't need to dig out a mixer. In fact, you want to make muffins by hand, or they'll turn out tough and full of holes because the gluten in the flour has been worked too much.  Trust me. Trust Alton Brown!

 
I decided to use Organic Pastry Flour. If you've never used this whole wheat, it's so worth trying. I have to say that I feel a tad bit less guilty about eating baked goods for breakfast, if incorporate this.  Let's begin!  For those of you who are new to my blog (and welcome...) I always have a printable recipe at the bottom of this post.  To start, the ratio I use is 25% pastry flour and 75% unbleached flour. I recently watched an Alton Brown episode of "Good Eats".  He uses his food processor to sift dry ingredients, because the blades aerates the dry ingredients, so that's exactly what I did-- because Alton Brown says s!. I added the flours, sugar and baking powder.  Next, I added the cold butter and pulse it until the mixture looked crumbly. I added the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl...

I love shopping at my local World Market! When I spotted this Blood Orange jam, it was destined to be in this recipe.  Truthfully, I don't like orange marmalade on toast. I do like orange marmalade in pan sauces, as glazes or in baked goods.  Next...

You need 1 cup of fresh squeezed orange juice.  I don't buy the stuff in the carton, or the frozen concentrates. I pay a couple of bucks, extra, because I don't want high fructose corn syrup. I want the real deal. End of sermon. Add the juice to the marmalade and one teaspoon of real vanilla. I'll spare you my sermon on artificial vanilla. You're welcome. Beat two eggs.

Pour the juice & marmalade into the dry ingredients...then the beaten eggs.  Now gently mix the ingredients.... gently. Seriously, I just fold them in. Remember what Alton Brown I said about not overworking the dough?
Preheat the oven to 375F and prep your muffin pans with non-stick baking spray. I use an ice cream scoop to easily measure each muffin. Look at those bits of blood orange!

I debated on adding the topping.  I'm so glad that I did. You need sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and 1 Tbsp of melted butter. This makes more topping that you need, though. Sprinkle about 1 teaspoon of topping on each muffin. Ree says to bake 20-22 minutes, until done. My rule of thumb is to bake at 2-3 minutes less than what a recipe says to do.  I can always bake it longer, but if too long-- well I'm out of luck. So I set the timer to 18 minutes. They were perfectly baked and smelled heavenly. My husband was anxiously waiting with a smile on his face.

These puffed up beautifully.  A trick I learned from King Arthur Flour is to run a knife around each muffin and carefully lay them at an angle. They're hot, so be careful. This prevents the bottoms of the muffins from becoming soggy. After a couple of minutes, I put them on a wire cooling rack.

These were steaming hot when I broke this one open...

VERDICT: Good morning!  I really liked the crunch of the topping.  These remind me of Snickerdoodles. The orange flavor was very mild; I am tempted to add some orange extract to enhance the flavor next time. I'm very tempted to try a version using olive oil, instead of butter.  The ratio of whole wheat to unbleached flour worked out well. The muffins were very slightly dense, but still tender enough to earn a spot in my "keeper file".  I got exactly 18 muffins from this recipe.  The rest will be packed and shipped off to my husband's office.  The last thing I need are a dozen of these babies in my kitchen. I'd eat them all, and that's not good. It is swim season, after all!

I'll share this recipe on my neglected sister blog, "Foodie Fans of the Pioneer Woman".  As of late, I have been so scarce on this blog and in visiting so many of yours. My job has drained most of my energy and I do miss being able to visit blogs daily.  Hopefully, someone who is as much a fan of The Pioneer Woman as I am will take over the hosting of it. Still, I won't abandon it all together.  I think a lot of people are traveling for summer, so blogsophere gets a bit quieter anyway.

If you missed the Giveaway that is being sponsored by Magic Bullet-- this company is giving away Magic Bullet's to four of my readers.

All you have to do is.... well, just click here to find out. The deadline is June 18th.  The printable recipe is below:

Happy Summer!