Rhubarb Muffins

When I was a kid, Judy P. made rhubarb muffins that I loved. I always looked forward to being at her house when there were fresh muffins and when I used to work at her fishcamp, we made these muffins all the time. For years I've been thinking that I need to just ask her for the recipe because I still think about those muffins.

Last summer when I was in Kodiak I finally asked, and Judy copied the recipe onto a lovely postcard for me when she came out to Chiniak for my mom's birthday. I've been looking at that postcard all winter and finally got around to making them today with the last of my rhubarb from last summer (I really don't know why it took me so long). They are just as good as I remember. Now I just have to find some people to help me eat the remaining 19 muffins.

These muffins are from Cooking Alaskan and apparently won second place at the Tanana Valley Fair Bake-off in 1980. Judy has always used 1/2 cup less brown sugar than what the recipe calls for and doesn't add a topping. I did the same. I also substituted half of the oil with applesauce and used only 1 1/2 cups white flour and 3/4 cup whole wheat flour. Next time I will also use more rhubarb. You can never have too much rhubarb.

Rhubarb Muffins

1 1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup oil
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup sour milk (or yogurt)
1 1/2 cup diced rhubarb
1/2 cup walnuts
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Topping:
2 tsp melted butter
2/3 cup white sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Beat brown sugar, oil, egg, vanilla, and sour milk. Add rhubarb and walnuts.

In separate bowl, mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Add liquid ingredients and stir only until moistened.

Spoon into greased and floured muffin cups.

Bake at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Makes about 20-24 muffins.

Snow and Baking Fail

I spoke too soon. I woke up to a good dusting of wet snow this morning. It didn't last long though. Still, it was a bit chillier than it has been in weeks.

I made zucchini bread tonight and had one of those awesome absent-minded kitchen mishaps (I blame them on the grad school brain.) While the zucchini bread was in the oven I glanced at it a couple of times through the window and was surprised at how slow it was cooking, but didn't think too hard about it. When the timer went off and it didn't look done, I just added 5 minutes and went back to what I was doing.

After it went off again the bread still looked completely under-baked. I took it out of the oven just to make sure I was right (which I was). I thought about how I had preheated the oven, how I was sure I set it at the right temp, and then thought "what the $%^&? I KNOW the oven was set at 400!" Then I looked at the oven dial and saw this:

And it clicked. Rewind about a half an hour. I was sitting at the table with my back to the stove/counter eating my leftover quiche which I had warmed in the toaster oven. I heard the toaster oven click like it does when the heating element is cylcing on and off and realized I'd forgotten to turn it off when I took my quiche out (I guess that was kitchen fail #1 of the night). So I stood up, turned around, and ... shut off the OVEN?!? Really? I guess that's what I did because a while later I noticed the toaster oven was still on, but again, not thinking too hard, I just turned it off.

After I finished my quiche, I went out to the garage to hang up a load of laundry, washed the dishes, cleaned the counters, all before the timer went off for the zucchini bread. All that time, the oven wasn't even on!! Smooth.

Luckily this was not my worst ever kitchen fail. But it does seem that I am on a roll. The other night I loaded the crock pot up with vegetables and then almost went to bed without plugging it in. The zucchini bread did turn out great though and the recipe is below.

Healthy Zucchini Bread

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Grease one loaf pan.

1/2 cup white flour
1/2 cup wheat flour
1/2 cup oats
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp allspice
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
5/8 cup sugar
1/8 cup oil
1/4 cup apple sauce
1 banana
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 cup shredded zucchini
1/2 cup raisins or dates or walnuts

Whisk dry ingredients together

In a separate bowl beat eggs. Add wet ingredients.

Combine the wet and dry ingredients, mix until just combined.

Fold in zucchini and raisins/dates/walnuts.

Bake 45-50 min or until knife comes out clean.

Pear Gingerbread Cake

A couple of months ago I read about this Pear Gingerbread Cake on the Food in Jars blog. I have now made it four times; twice it turned out amazing and twice it was a disaster. What was the deal? This is the story:

Attempt #1: I made this cake shortly after reading about it on Food in Jars. It was amazing. Moist, flavorful, and fluffy. I told Ryan that I thought it was the most delicious cake I'd ever made.

Attempt #2: Excited about the first cake, I made it again for my friend, and fellow grad student, Lisbeth's colloquium. This time I decided to add two pears instead of one. I also used slightly thinned yogurt instead of buttermilk (see recipe). The batter was very thin and the cake took FOREVER to bake in the middle - so long that the edges were seriously dark and crispy. Essentially the batter was too liquid-y - the cake had almost burned on the outside yet wasn't baked through in the center. I was so disappointed that Ryan even offered to run to Fred Meyer's at 10 o'clock at night to buy me a cake mix (or whatever would make me feel better) so I could make something else for Lisbeth's talk. In the end, I managed to salvage the baked, but not burned, portions of the cake. After all, grad students aren't terribly picky about free food. Even though I was disappointed, I knew there was potential for this cake to turn out so much better, so I tried again.

Attempt #3: Thinking I had learned my lesson about adding extra pear, I made the cake again in Kodiak for Patrick and Zoya's solstice party. Despite following the recipe exactly, I made one stupid mistake: I didn't bake it long enough! I used an 8x8" pan rather than the 5x9" pan I have at home. Once again, I was able to salvage some piece around the edge for the party, but I was STILL disappointed.

Attempt #4: Determined to make that fluffy, moist, delicious cake again, I've been saving a pear, waiting til it gets nice and ripe to make the cake again. Tonight was the night. Apparently the fourth time is the charm - it turned out exactly like it was supposed to.

Hopefully I have finally figured out all the bugs in this recipe and I can make this cake consistently from now on. The most important things I've learned? Use the 5x9" pan, don't add more than one pear, and don't underbake!!

Here is the recipe from Food in Jars:

Pear Gingerbread Cake

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup cane syrup or honey (I used honey)
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk (or some plain yogurt thinned out with milk - be warned, this didn't work out for me!)
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1 cup peeled and finely chopped pear (I used one pear - don't use two!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease baking dish.


Cream butter and brown sugar together. Once they well integrated, add molasses, honey, eggs, buttermilk, vanilla extract and grated ginger. Mix to combine.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and allspice.
Add dry ingredients to wet and mix to combine. Once they are well integrated, fold in the chopped pears.

Scrape batter into the greased baking dish and bake for 25-35 minutes. It is done when the edges pull away from the corners of the pan and a tester comes out mostly clean.

Gingerbread Architecture

Gingerbread Lane

Only a kid from Alaska (Ryan) would build an outhouse to go with his gingerbread house

The gingerbread architects

Katelyn and John and their art

Ryan and I

Yesterday we decorated gingerbread houses - an Odell Christmas tradition. This was the first time we've ever used real gingerbread though. Usually we go the easier graham cracker route. Ryan and I made the gingerbread on Tuesday. We spent a good five hours rolling, cutting, and baking the dough for seven houses (one extra in case we had any disasters). It was exhausting. But it was worth it! We had some graham crackers on hand though for emergencies and for additions. I think next time we would do the gingerbread again but use graham crackers for the roofs. They're lighter and easier to perch on top of an already precarious gingerbread structure.

Ryan and Katelyn hard at work

John adding the last piece of roof

Mom and the house that won the frosting award

Ryan's gingerbread person dance party

Michael and Ryan usually do not like to be constrained by simple house designs and usually build something unique while I stick to the tradition four walls and roof plan. Michael definitely gets the award this time for the most original "house." We dubbed his "The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster." He did not intend it to look like a church, but it did. The entire time the rest of us were assembling and building our houses, he was working away on designing and cutting his pieces. He didn't even get started "gluing" things together until we were all done. But we waited for him to take photos and I think it was worth it. Here is The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster:

Holiday Baking: Fluffy Walnut Scones

One of my favorite goodies to bake during the holidays is maple walnut scones. I got this recipe from my friend Ginny in Fairbanks after she made them for me a couple of summers ago. I have never made scones and wasn't even sure I liked them (all I could think about were the dried-out sugary $5 scones they sell at Starbucks). These scones are nothing like that. And even better, they are easy to make.

This morning when I made these I decided to alter the recipe a little. The dough turned out way too wet, so instead of rolling it out and cutting it into triangles, I had to just plop balls of dough on a cookie sheet. I was nervous because the consistency was so different than it should have been. They turned out just fine anyway - phew! This time they were WAY fluffier than they've ever been before and I'm loving it. I'm not sure if they still even qualify as a scone, but that doesn't really matter because they're delicious. So here are the directions with the original recipe and my alterations:

Maple Walnut Scones

1 cup chopped walnuts
1 3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 salt
6 Tbsp unsalted butter, chilled
1 egg
1/4 cup half and half - I added a tiny bit extra this time
3 tsp maple syrup (the original recipe called for 1 tsp maple extract)

-bake nuts for 5 min at 375, allow to cool completely
-combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, stir well
-slice butter into flour mixture, making sure each piece is coated, using a wire whisk press into butter until sandy, add walnuts
-in a separate bowl beat half and half, egg, and maple
-combine mixtures just until blended with a spoon (the original recipe says to first use a spoon then your hand, but my version this time was way too wet to be mixed by hand)
- plop balls of dough on an ungreased cookie sheet (in the original recipe, you would roll the dough out on a flat surface and cut triangle-shaped pieces out)
-bake for 15-20 min at 375F

* These scones are yummy even without the walnuts.

Rhubarb Cobbler and Cake

Rhubarb, strawberry, blueberry cobbler

Catherine Z.'s famous rhubarb cake before...

...and after

When we first came home from Palmer with all this rhubarb last week, I made a cobbler with rhubarb, strawberries, blueberries, and my mom's oatmeal topping. It didn't last long and a couple of nights later I made Catherin Z.'s rhubarb cake. Catherine Z. is the graduate program coordinator for the anthropology department (pretty much the most important position in the department, especially if you're a graduate student). Her rhubarb cake is also famous among the grad students.

I had heard about this cake before, but this was the first time I had tried it. I was not disappointed; it is amazing! So light and fluffy and delicious. And easy to make. I made it again on Sunday to take to a 4th of July party. Here is the recipe:

Rhubarb Cake

1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg (beaten)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup buttermilk (or sour milk)
2 cups flour
2 cups rhubarb cut into 1/4" pieces
1 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup white sugar

Cream butter and brown sugar. Add egg and vanilla. Mix soda and buttermilk together separately, and add alternately to the mix with flour. Mix well. Add rhubarb. Pour into 9x14" well-greased pan. Mix cinnamon and white sugar together and sprinkle over the top. Bake at 350F for 35 min (or until toothpick comes out clean).

Catherine has also made this with peaches and said it turned out great. I added a few strawberries the second time I made it and that was good too.

A Sailboat Cake

Jay and his birthday cake

This is my friend Jay. His birthday was on Sunday and I needed an excuse to make a cake. Jay has been very involved with the UW sailing club over the last couple of years so I wanted to make sailboat cake for him. I did some googling and then came up with this cake design. This was only my second attempt at using fondant - but I was much smarter this time around (read about my  first fondant experiment here). Coloring and rolling the fondant went much more smoothly this time and I was glad to have Ryan's help again.

Baking the cake was a bit of an experiment too. I used a yellow cake recipe from "Rose's Heavenly Cakes." This book strongly suggests weighing ingredients rather than measuring them. Each recipe provides both the measurements and the weights though. I baked two cakes for this sailboat cake (I only have one 10" pan). For the first cake, I carefully weighed each ingredient. By the time I made the second cake, I was over it; I haphazardly measured the ingredients and threw them together as I normally would. The batters came out very differently - the first one was much thinner. I was interested to see how the cakes would differ. I thought the first one was sure to come out better. To my surprise, almost everyone at the party said they preferred the second cake, the one I measured rather than weighed.

There are other variables that might have influenced which cake people preferred though. I think I slightly over-baked the first cake. That cake was also the bottom layer, so it sat under the weight of the second cake and all the frosting and fondant for three days before we ate it. It probably got a little compressed. In the end I'm not sure why the second cake came out better.

I guess I'm just not totally convinced the weighing thing is worth the extra time and effort. Since the combination of baking the cake/s, making the frosting, rolling the fondant, decorating, etc. takes so long anyway, I'm tempted to cut corners somewhere. I sort of feel like the bottom line is that cake is cake; you can't really go wrong when you're main ingredients are flour, sugar, butter, and eggs. Those are definitely not Rose's sentiments in the introduction to "Rose's Heavenly Cakes" though - according to her there is no comparison. She doesn't have to know what a lazy baker I am though!

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

That is the name of the new baking book Molly gave me.  And yes, it really is possible to make Artisan Bread in five minutes a day (depending on how you measure the time).  The trick is to make the dough in advance and then keep it in your fridge for up to two weeks.  The basic recipe is really easy and it doesn't even require kneading.  On baking day you simply cut off a pound or so of the dough shape it, let it rise and bake.  If you don't count the rising and baking time (because presumably you are doing something else during this time) it really only takes about five minutes.  Not only is it quick, but the bread has a really great flavor.  I have made four loaves of this bread already and really love it.  To last batch of dough I added dried thyme leaves and rosemary leaves for a more flavorful herb bread.  The bread was so delicious we didn't even make sandwiches with it, we simply ate it will cheese in our lunches.

My first loaf ready to go in the oven

Success!

My second loaf was a little large and features a different "slash" pattern.

Homemade Granola Bars

Ryan and I are big snack-eaters and we go through a lot of granola bars - the problem is that I don't really like most granola bars and Ryan is bored with the selection available at grocery stores. I eat them though because they're conveniently packaged and easy to eat without making a mess (easier than say, eating an orange or banana on the bus or on a plane). So we decided it was time to try something new: make our own granola bars! I also thought we could make something healthier than what you can get at Safeway. I did some googling, and the recipe I decided to go with came from the Joyful Abode blog (check out the link to see her beautiful pictures). It seemed like a relatively simple recipe without too many ingredients and no high fructose corn syrup.

They turned out awesome! I had to restrain myself from eating them all the night we made them. They were pretty easy to make too, although I have to admit that Ryan did most of the work as I was on the phone with my cousin who just defended her master's thesis (Congrats Ann Marie!).

These are the granola bars we made, almost identical to the one's posted on Joyful Abode, but there are certainly many delicious possible variations:

Preheat oven to 400F

2 cups oats
3/4 cup sesame seeds
3/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup crushed peanuts (unsalted)
1/2 cup crushed cashews (lightly salted)
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup honey
4 Tbsp butter
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
8 oz. craisins, dried apples, dried apricots

Mix the oats, nuts, sunflower and sesame seeds in a baking dish with sides and toast in oven for 10-12 minutes, stirring every few minutes.

Prepare a baking dish lined with waxed paper and lightly sprayed with nonstick spray.

Put the brown sugar, honey, butter, salt, and vanilla in a sauce pan and bring to simmer, stirring constantly.

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl, making sure the honey mixture coats everything.

Put the granola mix into the wax paper-lined baking dish and spread the mixture out. Put another piece of waxed paper over the top and press the granola down as hard as you can - you really want it packed in there so it doesn't end up crumbly. Let it sit 2-3 hours until completely cooled.

Carefully turn the baking dish over onto a cutting board so the slab of granola comes out. Peel away the waxed paper and cut the granola into bars. Wrap individually or store together in a container. Warning, they do come out a little sticky, but they are delicious!

Homemade English Muffins

I celebrated a birthday recently and was gifted a couple of excellent bread baking books.  In the book my sister gave me I came across a recipe for English muffins that caught my attention. I had never even contemplated making them from scratch.  As it turns out, its not very difficult and well worth the effort.  Besides having an excellent texture and taste, the English muffins are cooked on the stove top and leave the house with the aroma of fresh bread for days.  I felt lucking they turned out as well as they did because in the course of making the muffins I left home to respond to the "Mail Box Peak Mission"  (see the blog post from last week).  The dough had just finished rising so I asked Molly to throw it in the fridge and maybe I could salvage it tomorrow.  As it turns out, overnight refrigeration was not hindrance at all. Now I know I can mix the dough in advance and cook the muffins in the morning!

Here is the recipe:
1 and 2/3 cups milk, scalded (180 F)
4 Tbs. unsalted butter
1.5 tsp salt
2 Tbsp. honey
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 packet (2.25 tsp.) yeast
4 cuts all purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat flour
Cornmeal for dusting

Pour hot milk into mixing bowl.  Stir in butter, salt and honey, and mix until butter is milted.  Let cool to 105F.  Stir in egg and yeast.  Stir in both flours, and mix to form a rough ball.

Knead for five minutes or so until smooth.  Place dough in bowl, cover, let rise one hour until doubled.

Roll out dough 1/2 inch thick.  Cut out 3" circles.  Place circles on a baking sheet with cornmeal.  Spring more cornmeal on the top sides.  Let circles rest for 20 min.  Heat skillet over medium heat.  Cook muffins 6-8 min, turn over and cook another 6-8 min.  Monitor carefully to make sure they are browning but not burning. Enjoy!

One Last Chance (sort of)

Ryan's birthday cake

Ryan, Richard, and Megan

In the Pacific Northwest we have had an amazing amount of late snow this year so I was tempted to get out climbing and skiing this weekend. Unfortunately, because of all the snowfall, access to the mountains is still pretty much limited to the major mountain passes. To further put a damper on our plans, the avalanche conditions have been pretty bad the last few weeks with heavy wet snow slides occurring on many slopes. This all amounted two options: either we would stay out of the mountains or head to a ski resort.

Amazingly the ski resorts are still open and there is fresh snow. Richard and I went to Alpental yesterday morning for some spring skiing. There was indeed fresh snow. With temperatures in the mid 30's, it was like skiing in mashed potatoes. It was fun but the thick and sticky snow keep us working hard.

The resort skiing might be coming to an end, but the ski season is certainly not over. Earlier this season I lost a ski while skiing some difficult terrain at Stevens Pass. The snow pack up there will last for a few more months, but once it is gone I intend to return to look for my ski.

-Ryan
---------------------------

I was in Kodiak last week for Ryan's birthday, but I finally got to make him a cake this weekend and we had Richard and Megan over after the boys got back from skiing. I've been wanting to try more recipes from "Rose's Heavenly Cakes", so I let Ryan pick one out. He chose an angel food cake with dark chocolate. It is made just like a regular angel food cake, but you add little bits of grated dark chocolate after you've folded in the flour. It was yummy!

-Molly

Fondant Adventures and Graham Bread

Experimenting with the corners

cutting out dots

serving the cake with some friends over

I've been wanting to try cake decorating with fondant for a few months and decided Valentine's Day was a good excuse to give it a try. Usually I do the cake decorating on my own and with the exception of cleaning up, Ryan usually stays out of the way. This time he graciously offered to roll out the fondant. I was SO happy to have his help!

Overall my first fondant experiment was a success. I did learn some important lessons though. First lesson: do not try to heat up the fondant, even if it feels like a brick. This will only cause the fondant to become sticky. Second: do not add anything, other than water and vanilla extract, to the fondant. The texture of the fondant is very important. I added a little bit of cocoa powder, thinking it would make the fondant brown and add chocolate flavoring. Instead, it completely ruined the consistency and it was nearly impossible to use. I did manage to get a few brown circles for the cake, but not nearly as many as I had hoped. Third: the fondant can be (carefully) molded to fit even a square cake. I did not realize this when I started and tried to cut the corners to make the fondant fit. Only later did I google "fondant square cake" to find a YouTube video with instructions. I should have done that first!

I also tried a new cake recipe this time too. My aunt Judy recently sent me a cookbook called "Heavenly Cakes." It has so many delicious-sounding cakes that it was hard to pick just one, but I ended up going with a spice cake. It was delicious! Even though we had a few small mishaps with the fondant, I did love the final product (look at the Feb. 12 post to see a photo).

Ryan did more experimenting with the graham flour. He made a cinnamon raisin bread from the recipe on the back of the graham flour bag. The loaves came out perfect, so delicious!

Ryan kneading the graham bread

Cinnamon raisin graham bread - yum!

Graham Gems

I was chatting with my Grandma Cross recently about baking. She had recently pulled out an old recipe for graham gems that my Great Grandmother used to make almost every week. Graham gems are essentially a hearty muffin that calls for Graham flour. I had never heard of graham flour and Grandma had been unable to find it in the store recently. Living in a big city, I figured I could find graham flour and was interested in trying out this old family recipe.

Grandma send me the recipe and I went in search of the flour. After two grocery stores and no luck I almost ordered the flour online, but eventually I found it at a Whole Foods. For those who don't know, graham flour is essentially whole wheat floor except that the rather than simply grinding the whole grain wheat kernel (bran, germ, and endosperm), in graham flour the components are ground separately. The endosperm is ground finely, initially creating white flour. The bran and germ are ground coarsely. The two parts are then mixed back together, creating a coarse-textured flour that bakes and keeps well.

So, I gave it a try. Its a bit of an odd recipe compared to other muffins I make so I was a little skeptical, but they came out great! They have a nice spongy texture that is not too chewy but great for spreading butter or jam on. And looking over the ingredients they seem reasonably healthy. I will definite make them again.
And here is the funny part: as a kid I used to call my Grandma Cross "Gramgram", so that makes this recipe "Gramgram's Graham Gems."

Here is the recipe:

Graham Gems (Great Grandma and Grandma's recipe)

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon shortening

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup molasses

1 cup sour milk

1 cup sweet milk

2 cups graham flour

1 1/2 cups white flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

Makes 2 dozen muffins. Bake at 350 deg. for 15 minutes.

Food Happenings in the Odell Cross Household

Maple Almond Butter

My lunch today with Ryan's homemade bread, my mom's strawberry jam, and my almond butter.

Peach raspberry jam

Ryan's healthy pumpkin bread (recipe courtesy of CFW)

I suppose it was a bit premature to call an end to the canning season a couple of months ago. When I saw more local frozen sliced peaches at the grocery store I couldn't say no. I finally used them up, along with some raspberries I froze last summer. The peach raspberry jam is my favorite of all the jams I made this year. I put in a little more sugar than I normally do for peach jam to balance the tartness of the raspberries. I used about 3 lbs of sliced peaches, about 2 cups of raspberries and 1 1/4 cups of sugar. I do think that next time I would use slightly less raspberries, they quickly overwhelm the peaches. I've decide this jam is also the prettiest of all the jams I've made. I'd like to get a photo of the jars in the sunlight, but sunlight tends to be scarce in Seattle and I am never home during daylight hours anyway. Maybe this weekend...

I also made my own almond butter last week. I was inspired by a recipe on the "Food in Jars" blog. I roasted the almonds with a little bit of maple syrup, and then put them in the food processor with some peanut oil. Mine didn't turn out quite as creamy as the example I saw, but I didn't want to push my food processor too hard and the motor got really hot! I'm not a huge peanut butter fan so I do like trying different nut butters. I had never really considered how easy they would be to make myself until I read the recipe on Food in Jars. Ryan baked more bread this weekend and with my mom's strawberry jam, I was able to eat an all-homemade sandwich in my lunch today. I forgot how delicious my mom's strawberry jam is. It's hard to compete with something that good.

Tonight Ryan tried a healthy pumpkin muffin recipe posted by our friend Catherine on her blog. It's a good thing they are yummy because the recipe made A LOT of muffins as well as the small loaf Ryan is holding in the photo!