Cinnamon Brown Butter Sourdough Muffins #MuffinMonday

These cinnamon brown butter sourdough muffins are fluffy and tender, lightly sweetened and flavorful, perfect for breakfast or snack time. 

I’m trying to learn how to downsize. Even with giving baked goods away, we still seem to have more than we can eat since none of my immediate family is a big sweet eater. To that end, I now own a six-cup muffin pan. 

Or I should say, I again own a six-cup muffin pan. The two I had in Dubai went in the shipment to the Channel Islands and I was planning to pick one of them up this summer and bring it back to Houston. 

As we all know, that trip was canceled, along with everyone else’s summer holidays. Best laid plans, and all that. 

This recipe makes six large muffins. Since my new muffin pan is for normal sized muffins, I used oversized muffin pan liners, which work great for this purpose. If you don’t happen to have deep liners, you can easily make some out of baking parchment.

Cinnamon Brown Butter Sourdough Muffins

The brown butter lends such a lovely background flavor to these muffins but if you can’t be bothered (do bother, it takes mere minutes!) use about 1 tablespoon less than the full half cup of butter and just melt it and leave it to cool before proceeding with the recipe. The sourdough starter can be discard or fed. 

Ingredients

For the muffins:

1/2 cup or 120g butter

1 cup or 125g all-purpose flour

1/2 cup or 100g light brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup or 130g sourdough starter - stir down the bubbles before measuring

1/4 cup or 60ml milk

1 large egg, at room temperature

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the topping:

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Method

Heat the butter in a small saucepan over a medium heat. It will melt and then white foam will form on top. Continue cooking until milk solids start turning brown and the butter is a lovely caramel color. Remove from the heat and leave to cool. In lieu of process photos, I offer you this link to see The Cooking Actress make brown butter. Kayle is my brown butter guru and her recipes are legend. 

Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C. Line a six-cup muffin pan with tall muffin liners. In a small bowl, mix together the topping of cinnamon and sugar. Set aside. 

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, vanilla, brown butter, and sourdough starter until well combined.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold until just combined. This will be a fluffy dough rather than a batter. 

Divide the dough evenly between the six muffin cups. Sprinkle the tops with the cinnamon sugar. 

Bake in your preheated oven for about 20-25 minutes or until the muffins are nicely browned and a toothpick comes out clean. Remove to a wire rack to cool. 

Enjoy! 

It’s the last Monday in October, which means it’s Muffin Monday again. Check out all the tasty muffins my friends are sharing!

• Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Muffins from Making Miracles
• Cinnamon Brown Butter Muffins from Food Lust People Love
• Date, Prune, and Dried Cherry Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Pumpkin Sourdough Muffins from Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Savory Zucchini 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 of our 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. 

Pin these Brown Butter Cinnamon Muffins!

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Slow Cooker Shiitake Congee

Slow cooker shiitake congee is a warming bowl of comfort, made with lots of savory, flavorful mushrooms and your favorite rice. Top it with your favorite add ons.

One of my favorite breakfast buffet dishes when we lived in southeast Asia was the big pot of congee or rice porridge with lots of toppings from crunchy little dried fish and sliced chili peppers to crispy shallots and sambal. Such a bowl of comfort! 

It’s super easy to make in a slow cooker as well. Simply slice up your mushrooms, throw everything in together and walk away. You can eat it plain or dress it up with toppings. 

Slow Cooker Shiitake Congee

I’m publishing this recipe – looooong overdue – with permission from my lovely friend, author Kathy Hester. It’s from her wonderful revised and updated cookbook, The Vegan Slow Cooker. <affiliate link Like all of Kathy’s great cookbooks, the instructions are clear and helpful adaptations are included. Everything I’ve made from ALL of Kathy’s cookbooks has been excellent! Highly recommend. This recipe makes 4-6 servings.

Ingredients

For the congee:

8 cups or 1880ml water or broth (IMHO: Broth adds more flavor.)

4 cups or 280g thinly sliced fresh shiitake mushrooms

4 cups or 280g thinly sliced button, baby bella, shiitake mushrooms or combination

1 cup or 185g rice (I used long grain. Kathy’s recipe says brown rice. Use your favorite rice.)

3 tablespoons or 24g grated ginger

Optional suggestions for serving:

Soy sauce

Scallions

Cilantro

Chopped chili peppers

Extra grated ginger

Leftover cooked veggies

Tofu cubes

Method

If you are pressed for time in the morning, you can prepare the mushrooms and ginger the night before and keep them in the refrigerator overnight. 

Otherwise, cut the hard stem ends off of the mushrooms then use a sharp knife to cut them into thin slices. If desired, set a few slices aside for topping. 

Then grate your ginger. 

Add them both to your slow cooker, along with the rice and the liquid of your choice, either broth or water. Normally I would use chicken broth but in deference to Kathy’s vegan recipe, I used a rich vegetarian stock. 

Cook on low for 7 to 9 hours. When time is up, give the pot a good stir. 

Kathy suggests (be still my heart that LOVES congee in a buffet!) to place your chosen toppings on the table and let everyone add what they like best. 

In our house, sliced chili peppers are an absolute necessity but we also enjoyed the suggested tofu cubes and scallions aka green onion tops. 

You do you but do make this comfort dish. You won’t regret it. And check out Kathy’s blog Healthy Slow Cooking (and her other books.) You won't regret that either. We are not a vegan family but we always love her creative and delicious recipes. 

Enjoy!

It's Multicooker Monday! Check out all the other Multicooker recipes my friends are sharing this month! Many thanks to Sue of Palatable Pastime, our group leader. 

• Air Fryer Pork and Vegetable Egg Rolls from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Air Fryer Roasted Broccoli from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Instant Pot Swedish Meatballs from Making Miracles
• Kerala Beef Olarthiyathu- Pressure Cooker from Sneha’s Recipe
• Slow Cooker Shiitake Congee from Food Lust People Love
• Slow Cooker Spaghetti Sauce from Palatable Pastime
• Southern Pimento Cheese Crockpot Potato Soup from Faith, Hope, Love, & Luck Survive Despite a Whiskered Accomplice
• Toaster Oven Turkey Schmaltz Cornbread from Sid's Sea Palm Cooking

Multicooker Monday is a blogger group created by Sue of Palatable Pastime for all of us who need encouragement to make better use of our small appliances like slow cookers, Instant Pots, Air Fryers, rice cookers and sous vide machines. We get together every third Monday of the month to share our recipes. If you are a food blogger who would like to post with us, please request to join our Facebook group.

Pin this Slow Cooker Shiitake Congee! 

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Cheesy Mixed Seafood Gratin #FishFridayFoodies

This cheesy mixed seafood gratin is a comforting dish your whole family will love. Serve it with grilled baguette slices as an appetizer, as a stand alone main course or to top a baked potato or pasta. 

I tend to buy seafood, at least when I don’t buy it fresh, in bags where it’s been flash frozen in individual pieces because that makes it easy to thaw and cook exactly what you need. 

The problem with this system, if it can even be called a system, is that sometimes I have one fish fillet or a handful of shrimp - or whatever - at the end of the bag. That’s when this tasty recipe comes in handy. 

Use whatever seafood you have! Crab meat, shrimp, any sort of boneless fish – smoked or not, scallops, mussels, even lobster meat, if you are so lucky. I’d probably draw the line at octopus or squid since they can be chewy when overcooked. 

Cheesy Mixed Seafood Gratin 

One more suggestion for serving this cheesy mixed seafood gratin: Add some frozen peas or even diced carrots, bake it topped with mashed potatoes instead of the breadcrumbs and call it fish pie, another warm and comforting dish. I love the versatility of this dish!

Ingredients

1/2 cup or 113g butter 

2 small stalks celery

1/2 medium onion

1/2 green bellpepper

1 red chili pepper (optional)

2 large cloves garlic

1/2 cup or 63g flour 

2 cups or 473ml milk 

8 oz or 226g cream cheese, at room temperature

2 fillets fish (about 3 1/2  – 4 1/4 oz or 100-120g each – I used one tilapia, one salmon

1 lb 1 2/3 oz or 500g shrimps, already peeled and deveined

3 1/2 oz or 100g smoked salmon

1 tablespoon sherry

Fine sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

For topping:

1/2 cup, packed, or 60g fresh breadcrumbs

3 oz or 85g Parmesan, grated

3 oz or 85g mozzarella, grated

drizzle olive oil

Optional to garnish:

Chopped flat leaf parsley

Method

Remove the hard strings and cut the celery into small cubes. Peel and dice the onion. Dice the green pepper, red pepper and mince the garlic.

Heat half of the butter over a low to medium flame, preferably in a pan that can go into the oven later. No one wants more washing up. 

Sauté the vegetables in the butter until they’ve softened, about 5-7 minutes. 

Add in the rest of the butter and let it melt. 

Add in the flour and stir until it’s well combined with the butter and veg with no flour showing. I like to add my flour with a sifter or sieve a little at a time, just sprinkling the top.

Once it’s all added, cook for a minute or two to get rid of the floury flavor. 

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C. 

Turn off the heat under the pan and stir the milk in a little at a time stirring well so you don’t create any lumps. 

Once it’s completely incorporated, add in the cream cheese cut into cubes and turn the heat back on low. 

Meanwhile, cut your seafood into bite-sized pieces. I chopped the smoked salmon pretty fine because it is quite salty and it's best dispersed evenly throughout the gratin. 

When the sauce has thickened, add the seafood to the pan and cook for several minutes over a medium flame until the sauce begins to bubble a little and seafood is just cooked through. 

Add in the sherry and season to taste with sea salt (if you are using salty smoked fish you might not need any) and few good grinds of black pepper. Stir well. 

If your pan is not oven-friendly now is the time to transfer the mixture to a baking dish that is. Toss together the breadcrumbs, Parmesan and mozzarella. Sprinkle the mixture on the seafood. 

Drizzle the top with olive oil. Bake in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes or until the top is golden and the gratin is bubbling nicely around the edges. 

Remove from the oven and sprinkle with a little chopped parsley for garnish. 

Serve on grilled bread, as topping for a baked potato or cooked pasta, or even on its own - with fresh veggies or a green salad to complete the meal. 

Enjoy!

This month my Friday Fish Foodie friends are sharing comfort food recipes made with seafood. Many thanks to our host, Sue of Palatable Pastime and our chief organizer Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm. Check out all the wonderful dishes!

• Bourride from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Cheesy Mixed Seafood Gratin from Food Lust People Love
• Crab and Rice Croquettes from Palatable Pastime
• Creamy Crab Soup from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Creamed Salmon from Sid's Sea Palm Cooking
• East Indian Fried Dry Bombil Masala from Sneha's Recipe
• Fish Po' Boy Sandwich from Making Miracles
• Popcorn-Battered Fried Fish, Remembering Oklahoma, and Kids in the Kitchen from Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Are you a food blogger who would you like to join Fish Friday Foodies? We post and share new seafood/fish recipes on the third Friday of the month. To join our group please email Wendy at wendyklik1517 (at) gmail.com. Visit our Facebook page and Pinterest page for more wonderful fish and seafood recipe ideas.

     Pin this Cheesy Mixed Seafood Gratin! 

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