Tates Bake Shop Double Berry Crumb Muffins and a Bonus Tea Loaf

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What a wild week it's been with my hectic work schedule!  Next Tuesday, I begin my vacation until January 3rd.  Today, I managed to get the tree and house decorated.   I was feeling a time crunch to write a review for Artisan Bakeware and for Tate's Bake Shop.   Last week, I received a lovely small unglazed loaf pan from Artisan Bakeware.

I have only a few pieces of stoneware, and I have to say that I liked the feel of this American hand-painted baking product.

Right after Thanksgiving, I received this lovely package in the mail, from Tate's Bakery:

...and I also received:

 ...a copy of Tate's Bake Shop owner, Kathleen King's, cookbook.   I bookmarked a dozen recipes.  It's a lovely cookbook, indeed. 

Alas, the cookies are all gone and I didn't have time to blog my own giveaway as quickly as I had hoped (as so many of my fellow food bloggers have).  I ate two each of the chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal raisin and macadamia nut (in a three-day period).  I'm going to talk more about which cookies we liked best when I do post a Tates Bake Shop giveaway (my next post, I promise) and that is when I will give one lucky reader a chance to win the same cookie package, and cookbook,  for your  own home. Today, I want to be fair to Artisan Bakeware, by focusing on reviewing how their product worked .  Fortunately, I found a recipe for Double Berry Crumb Muffins on page 14 of the Tate's Bake Shop Cookbook.  I decided to double the recipe so that I could bake a "tea loaf".

Since I live in California, we grown our own olallieberries in our backyard.  I also buy extra from a local farm stand, and then freeze them in 2 cup increments.  Chinese take-out style boxes are perfect for this:

 I do a quick thaw with running water...

(There will be a printable recipe at the bottom of this post.) 

 Here are the dry ingredients:  unbleached flour, sugar, salt and baking powder.  I reserved some of the flour and sprinkled them over the berries.  I do this so that the berries won't sink to the bottom of each muffin.

 

Melt 1/2 cup of butter.  (You see two sticks, because I'm doubling the recipe.)

The streusel has chopped pecans, brown sugar, flour, butter and fresh orange zest.  Set that aside.

The wet ingredients are milk, eggs and the melted butter.  Whisk them together, and add to the dry ingredients.

 Mix the wet and dry just until combined; don't over mix.  Gently fold the berries in.  You can grease a muffin tin, but I decided to use muffin liners. This is my large muffin tin, which makes six at a time.

 Top each muffin with the streusel. NOTE: Next time, I'll add double the amount of streusel.

Bake at 400F for 20-24 minutes.  My muffins were extra-large, so they took a little extra time.  A tip I learned from King Arthur Flour-- tip the muffins to one side so that they don't become soggy on the bottom.  After a few minutes, move them to a cooling rack.

 ... and here's the muffin recipe as a sweet loaf of goodness.

Taking a deep breath, I rotated the pan and the loaf slipped right out!  For the final test, I wondered how easy this unglazed loaf pan would be to clean...

Effortless!  Just like new!

POTTERY REVIEW:  I strive  to be respectful to my planet, my country and my health.  Emmerson Creek Pottery is American made. Their products are lead-free and they're hand-painted.  This loaf pan retails for $11.00 on their website.  My wish list-- and that means I'd love to own more of this product-- would be the larger loaf pan, that retails for $19.00.  If wishes were fishes, I'd want the unglazed deep dish pizza pan, retail price $23.00.  I spent some time perusing their website, and I took a particular liking to their lavender hand painted design.  I think that any of these pieces would make a beautiful heirloom that will last for many years to come.

Recipe Review:  I love to bake homemade muffins for breakfast.  I was able to make this batter in 15 minutes, plus take photographs.  This recipe is easy enough for beginner bakers.   The texture of the muffins were moist and very tender.  There were a LOT of berries, so decrease the amount if you prefer more muffin to berry ratio.  My husband adores berries, so he was very happy with the way I made them.  The cinnamon is very subtle, and the sweetness was just right.  I would definitely layer more streusel on top (which explains why I had some leftover), and maybe chop my pecans not quite as small as I did this time (I cheated and used a mini-chopper).  I loved the orange zest, which complimented the cinnamon and berries perfectly.  The "tea loaf" was equally moist.  On a five star rating, this earned a 4 1/2 by my husband, son and me.  I ate one, thank you very much. How's that for willpower?  The boys will devour the rest, no doubt.

I'm baking another Tate's Bake Shop recipe, as I type this post.  I will queue that post, next, and tell you how you could win an assortment of Tate's Bake Shop Cookies and a cookbook of your own.  So, if you didn't win on the multitude of other bloggers who had this giveaway-- maybe this is your lucky chance!

Here's the recipe, and  I hope you try these!

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commissions 16 CFR, Part 255 Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. Tomoson Product review & giveaway Disclosure.

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!