Sticky Toffee Bran Muffins #MuffinMonday

Just as in sticky toffee pudding, Medjool dates sweeten these tender bran muffins but since we are making muffins instead of dessert, no added sugar is necessary. That doesn’t mean these wouldn’t make a lovely sweet thing to end a meal with. But they’d also be a delightful breakfast.

Despite the holidays, or perhaps because of them, we’ve got some lovely muffins for you this month. When complicated holiday baking starts to overwhelm you, always remember that muffins can be baked quickly, often in less than half an hour.

This recipe takes just a bit longer since one must wait for the scalded milk-soaked dates to cool, but that step can actually be done ahead of time if you are going to be pushed for time before baking. But it’s worth it, I promise!

Make sure you scroll down to see all the muffins my Muffin Monday bakers have for you this month! As usual, they’ve out done themselves and I love the challenge of keeping up with their creativity.

Ingredients
9 large Mejool dates, separated
1 cup or 240ml milk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 cup or 160g all-purpose flour
1/2 cup or 70g oat bran
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1⁄4 cup or 60g butter, melted and cooled

Method
Pit and chop your dates, setting one aside for garnish.

Put the rest in a heatproof bowl. Add in the half teaspoon of baking soda. Scald the milk and pour it over the chopped dates.

Stir to help separate the bits of sticky date and set aside till cool. It will cool faster if you stir it occasionally. You’ll notice it begins to thicken as it cools as well. At this point, you could just eat it with a spoon, but do resist!

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by greasing it with non-stick spray or line it with muffin paper cups.

In a large bowl, sift your flour with the baking powder and salt and then add in the oat bran. Mix well.

Add your eggs to the cooled date mixture and whisk with a fork to combine.

Add the butter and whisk again.

Fold your wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.

Divide the batter evenly between the 12 cups of your prepared muffin pan and then top each with some of the reserved chopped date.

Bake for 20 - 25 minutes or until springy to the touch.

Cool for a few minutes then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

Check out all the fabulous muffins we've got for you - sweet and savory - this month!

• Bacon Cheddar Corn Muffins from Making Miracles
• Banana Cranberry Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Banana Streusel Muffins from All Roads from Lead to the Kitchen
• Healthy Morning Glory Muffins from Farm Fresh Feasts
• Lemon Ricotta Muffins from Sew You Think You Can Cook
• Savory Corn Bread Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Sticky Toffee Bran Muffins from Food Lust People Love

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all our of lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board.

Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday, can be found on our home page.

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Mince Pie Muffins #MuffinMonday

Sticky fruity mince pie filling, baked in a light, fluffy muffins, flavored with orange zest! These make a lovely treat for breakfast or with a cup of tea midmorning. 

For many of my British friends, the holiday season, from mid November through December, would not be the same without mince pies. Little shortcrust pastry pies filled with mince pie filling and baked to golden, flakey perfection. Which gave me an idea for this month’s Muffin Monday.

I have to tell you that this was pure experiment. I wanted the batter to be flavored with orange zest, just like the best mince pie shortcrust and the muffins had to have a generous scoop of mince filling.

This could so easily have gone very wrong. But, in the words of one of my favorite guinea pigs, they are orgasmic. Okay, okay, she tends to hyperbole, and I don’t think I’d go that far, but these muffins are seriously good. The mince pie filling stays pretty much in one place, giving you a good couple of bites of fruit, but it is also soaks the bottom of the muffin just enough to make it a little sticky, in a very good way.

And if the crunchy orange sugar topping isn’t enough for you, go ahead and put a sprinkle of the traditional mince pie powdered sugar on the very top.

Ingredients
1 cup or 200g sugar
Zest 1 orange
2 cups or 250g all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup or 240ml milk
1/2 cup or 12ml canola or other light oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 large eggs
1 cup or about 300g mincemeat pie filling

Optional to decorate: powdered sugar

Method
Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C. Generously grease cups and top of 12-cup muffin or line them with paper baking cups. I give the whole baking tray, including the baking cups, a light spray of Pam.

Zest your orange into the sugar and mix well. Remove 1/4 cup or about 40g to use for topping.

Add flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into the orange sugar. Mix well.

Then whisk together milk, oil, eggs and vanilla in another bowl.

Pour the milk mixture into the flour mixture.

Gently fold just until dry ingredients are moistened.

Spoon a little more than half of the batter into the prepared muffin pan.

Add a generous spoonful of mince pie filling to each.

Top with the remaining batter and sprinkle on the reserved orange sugar.

Bake 20-25 minutes or until muffins are golden.

Remove from oven and let cool for a few minutes before removing muffins from pan. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Sprinkle with some powdered sugar, if desired.

Enjoy!

Check out all the lovely muffins we have for you this month!

• Apple Cinnamon Roll Muffins from Making Miracles
• Bursting Raspberry Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Cinnamon Vanilla Muffins from Kelli's Kitchen
• Corn Dog Mini Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Cream and Cereal Muffins from Farm Fresh Feasts
• Mince Pie Muffins from Food Lust People Love

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all our of lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board.

Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday, can be found on our home page.

Roasted Onion Brie Muffins #MuffinMonday

Roasted onions lend a subtle sweetness to this savory cheesy Brie muffin complemented by the added herby freshness of rosemary.

The other night I roasted a big pile of onions with just this muffin in mind for the leftovers. But since I know how we are about roasted onions, I actually removed the one cup from the serving dish before it even made it to the dining table and hide it in the refrigerator. (A small bowl of roasted onions left vulnerably open on the countertop will be emptied in no time in our house, just a pinch at a time. The same goes for crumbled bacon, grated cheddar and toasted pecans.) It was a good move, as it turns out, because we ate every last crunchy, succulent bite of the onions that were on the table.

Savory muffins may not be everyone’s choice for breakfast, but they sure make a great accompaniment to soup for a light lunch or dinner. These guys with roasted onions and Brie would be as happy on your holiday buffet table as they would be on a TV tray for a cozy night in.

Ingredients
2 sprigs fresh rosemary plus more to garnish if desired
1 cup or 125g roasted onions (from this recipe or your favorite)
2 1/2 cups or 315g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
7 oz or 200g Brie
1/3 cup or 80ml canola or other light oil
1 cup or 240ml buttermilk
2 eggs

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin tin by lightly rubbing it with oil or use non-stick spray to coat. Or if you have silicone liners, those work too.

Mince your rosemary leaves and roughly chop your roasted onions.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together your flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and minced rosemary.

Cut the outside rinds off of the Brie pointe (if it has any) but you can leave the top and bottom on. Cut the Brie into cubes.

Reserve 12 bigger pieces for topping each muffin before baking then add the rest of the Brie a few pieces at a time to the flour mixture, stirring between additions, so that they are coated by the flour and won’t stick back together.

Add in the chopped roasted onions and stir again to coat them with flour.

Whisk together the oil, eggs and buttermilk in a smaller mixing bowl.

Pour your wet ingredients into your dry ones and stir a couple of times, until just combined.

Divide the batter between the muffin cups and top with the reserved cubes of Brie and some rosemary leaves, if desired.

Bake in your preheated oven for about 20-25 minutes or until the muffins are golden and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Allow the muffins to cool for a few minutes then remove them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

I am delighted to have six muffins to share with you today! Which one will you bake first?

• Asian Pear & Cardamom Cream Muffins from Farm Fresh Feasts
• Pumpkin Apple Streusel Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Raspberry Jam Crumb Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Roasted Onion Brie Muffins from Food Lust People Love
• Triple Dark Chocolate Muffins from The Spiced Life
• Whole Wheat Apple Rum and Raisin Muffins from Passion Kneaded

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all our of lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board.

Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday, can be found on our home page.

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Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins #MuffinMonday

No nuts, no extraneous ingredients. Just some rich chocolate muffins with semi-sweet chocolate chips. Because my baby is leaving on Sunday and I’m going to miss her.

Everybody loves plain things. Or so says my younger daughter. That doesn’t mean she’s not an adventurous eater or unwilling to try new things. But, on the whole, she’d rather if you didn’t add raisins or nuts to her baked goods, thankyouverymuch.

I’ve been blessed to spend this summer with her, while she waits for a visa that will allow her to live and work in the United Kingdom. We’ve filled out forms, amassed documents and the packet has now come back twice because they want something else that wasn’t asked for initially or want us to send it somewhere other than where we were first told to ship it. I’m sure that many governments have this issue where the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing, so I am not singling out the British here, but I wish they could all get their acts together!

Meanwhile, I have enjoyed having her at home since her graduation from RISD in June. I've even put her to work, designing our new Muffin Monday badge. And I finally got the needlework she made for my fiftieth birthday framed! Only took me two years.

A quote from the fabulous Julia Child.

She’ll be heading back the States now to look for gainful employment (Send any interesting offers for entry level jobs in textiles her way, please!) while she continues to wait for official word from the UK.

This plain, but delicious muffin is for you, sweet thing. Thanks for your patience, your sense of humor and your good company this summer. I’m going to miss you!

Ingredients
3/4 cup or 180ml milk
2 teaspoons vinegar
1 3/4 cups or 220g flour
1/2 cup or 40g dark cocoa powder (I use Hershey's Special Dark.)
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1/3 cup or 80ml canola or other light oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
3/4 cup or 150g semisweet chocolate chips, plus 1/4 cup or 50g for sprinkling on before baking

Method
Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C. Prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by greasing it or lining it with paper muffin cups.

Add the two teaspoons of vinegar to the milk in a measuring cup. Stir and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

In a smaller mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil and vanilla, along with the slightly curdled looking milk/vinegar mixture.

Fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, until just combined. There may still be some flour showing and that’s fine.

Fold in the larger pile of chocolate chips.

Use a scoop or large spoon to fill the prepared muffin cups. They are going to be pretty full.

Sprinkle the tops with the remaining chocolate chips.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Mine took only 20 minutes. You do not want to over bake these and dry them out.

Put the muffin pan on a wire rack to cool for about five minutes.

Remove the muffins from the pan and continue to cool on the wire rack. You can eat these warm but be prepared to lick melted chocolate chips off of your fingers.

Enjoy!

I’m delighted today to have eight additional delicious muffins to share with you! Many thanks to all my muffin baking friends!

• Apple Oatmeal and Goat Cheese Muffins from The Spiced Life
• Apple Oatmeal, A Whole Grain Muffin from Farm Fresh Feasts
• Apple Zucchini Muffins from Love and Confections
• Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins from Food Lust People Love
• Cornbread Bacon Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Peach and Pumpkin Muffins from Passion Kneaded
• Pumpkin Applesauce Muffins from Making Miracles
• Pumpkin Butterscotch Muffins from Kelli's Kitchen
• Pumpkin Spice Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all our of lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board.

Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday, can be found on our home page.

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Pesto Pine Nut Parmesan Muffins #MuffinMonday

Savory mini muffins with pesto, pine nuts and Parmesan make the perfect snack at cocktail time or really, anytime.

A little #MuffinMonday history
Food Lust People Love was almost one year old before I joined my first baking group in June of 2012. Muffin Monday was run by a talented blogger named Anuradha from Baker Street. We became friends over the next year and a half that we baked muffins together. Even though she worked full time, her blog was filled with lovely baked goods and she was very active on social media. The first year or so, Muffin Monday had a steady stream of participants but then they dwindled until it was just the two of us baking each week, for more than six months. I offered to help with sending out the emails or adding folks to the group but she would assure me that a work project was about to finish and then she’d have more time.

And then she stopped updating her blog and seemed to drop completely out of the social media circus that is blogging. I can’t tell you how sad I was but I completely understood how sometimes life can get in the way of all the things we want to do and something’s gotta give. I will be forever grateful to Anuradha for starting me on this path. Maybe someday, if she gets back to blogging, we can bake together again. I’d really like that.

As for me, I wasn’t done with muffin baking. I love the ease of the muffin baking method, the flexibility for adding ingredients to a sweet or savory batter, the short baking time and the portability of the muffins themselves. It seemed that the hashtag #MuffinMonday was widely in use on the internet, so I went solo and continued Muffin Mondays on my own for another 73 editions. For anyone who is keeping count, that means 153 muffin recipes on my blog. It’s quite the collection.

The future of #MuffinMonday
This summer I took a few weeks off, as I was traveling anyway, but also because I wanted to think about Muffin Monday and what the future might hold. I decided that if I really wanted to spread the love of muffins, I should open it up. So I have invited a small group of like-minded recipe creators to join me here for Muffin Monday. And since a weekly post is a large commitment – and I wanted them to say yes to the invitation – we will be posting only once a month, on the last Monday of every month.

I hope you all enjoy our creative muffin recipes. Make sure to scroll down to see what my Muffin Monday baking friends have for you today!

I’m kicking this one off with mini muffins that are great to serve at cocktail time. And, bonus, they freeze beautifully so make them ahead for your next party. What better way to celebrate baking muffins with a group again?

Pesto Pine Nut Parmesan Muffins

Ingredients for 18 mini muffins
1 cup or 125g flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/3 cup or 80ml milk
1/4 cup or 60ml olive oil
1/4 cup or 60g classic pesto
1 egg
3 oz or 85g Parmesan
1/4 cup or 40g pine nuts

Method
Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C and grease your mini muffin pans with a little olive oil or non-stick spray.

Grate your Parmesan and set aside a good handful for sprinkling on the muffin tops before baking.

In one big mixing bowl, add your dry ingredients, that is, the flour and baking powder. Add in the larger pile of grated Parmesan and stir well.

In small mixing bowl, whisk the milk, olive oil and pesto with your egg.

Fold the liquids to the dry mixture, stopping when they are just mixed.

Set aside a small handful of pine nuts for topping and fold the rest into your batter.

Divide the batter between your prepared muffins cups,  then top each one with a few pine nuts and a sprinkle of Parmesan.

Bake in your preheated oven for 12-15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes.

Remove from the muffin pans and finish cooling on a rack.

Enjoy!

The new Muffin Monday won't have a theme or a necessary ingredient so members are free to create muffins with whatever inspires them, wherever they may live. I look forward to seeing what they'll come up with each month! A drumroll, please, for the inaugural line up:

• Apricot, Almond, and Toasted Coconut Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Caramel Apple Buttermilk Muffins from Making Miracles
• Carrot Oat Banana Chunk Muffins from Passion Kneaded
• Ground Cherry Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Pesto Pine Nut Parmesan Muffins from Food Lust People Love
• Sour Cream Peach Muffins with Pecan Streusel from The Spiced Life

Many thanks to my daughter, Cecilie, for creating our badge. 

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all our of lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board.

Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday, can be found on our home page.

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