Saturday Morning Muffins on Wednesday

For the last few weekends when we have been home we have eaten muffins for breakfast on Saturday. The way it works is that we wake up and I am starving (I am always starving when I wake up and it runs in my family) and I want a muffin, but I am too hungry to find a recipe, make sure we have all the ingredients, make the batter, and bake them. That is a lot of work when one is already starving for a muffin. Russ likes a good muffin too, so he is usually game for going to get muffins (he is very sweet!) for both of us. There is a local coffee shop, Cool Beans, just down the rode that makes wonderful, huge, homemade, tasty, yummy muffins and that is where we (as in Russ, except for one time when I went) have been going to get muffins. While this is a great relaxing Saturday morning ritual I have to be honest that I have missed baking muffins or bread of any kind for that matter. So, I finally decided to make muffins tonight because it is a Thursday night…. Right now you might be wondering what a Wednesday night muffin has to do with a Saturday morning muffin ritual. Well, I will tell you. I got a very exciting surprise from Claire on Monday. Right now it is in a plastic bag on our counter and looks kind of gooey. She claims it will turn into bread if I feed it. I am super excited, so the muffins got moved to Wednesday and on Saturday morning I’ll attempt to make the gooey stuff in the plastic bag turn into a loaf of bread for breakfast. Magic will not be involved, but I may need luck… stay tuned to see how it turns out.

The muffins I made tonight are ones we saw on Jamie Oliver’s show on the Food Network, Jamie at Home. Russ and I both love this show and pretty much want to try most of the recipes. This is the first one we have had time to try. The muffins are called Butternut Squash Muffins with a Frosty Top. During the episode when Jamie made these he called them muffins sometimes and cupcakes other times. I am not sure if the two are interchangeable in British English or not, but I think they really could pass for either a muffin or cupcake.

To make the muffins you start by deseeding the butternut squash and giving it a rough chop. You don’t peel it which really surprised me, but on the same episode Jamie made a butternut squash soup and again left the skin on the squash when he cooked it. You take the pieces of squash and put them in the food processor and process them it is finely chopped. Then add the sugar and eggs and pulse it a couple times until it is blended. Then add the salt, flour, baking soda, cinnamon and olive oil and process it until it is all blended. You could add walnuts when you are adding the previous ingredients. I left them out as Russ doesn’t really like nuts in things. I think they would be so small that he probably wouldn’t have even noticed, but to be on the safe side I left them out. You then take the batter and fill the muffin tin (use paper muffin liners). These bake at 350 for about 20 to 25 minutes. While they are baking you make the frosty topping. In a bowl zest a Clementine and a lemon. Then add the juice from half of the lemon. Then mix in the sour cream, confectioners’ sugar, and a little vanilla extract (I used this instead of a vanilla bean). Then taste and adjust it as needed to have a good balance of sweet and sour. Mine was a little on the sour side, so I added more confectioners sugar until it was tart, yet sweet. Stick the frosting in the fridge until the muffins are done and then when they come out and cool slightly frost them.

These were really tasty and as I said before they could pass for a muffin or a cupcake. The muffin is dense and moist and has a wonderful flavor from the butternut squash and cinnamon. I love how bright and colorful they are too from the squash. As I mentioned earlier it really surprised me that he didn’t have you peel the squash. I have never not peeled a butternut squash unless I am going to roast it and then scoop out the squash after it roasts. You really can’t tell that the peel wasn’t removed and it makes preparing the muffins so much easier and faster. The frosting is more like a glaze as it is runny and slightly thin. I love the tart and sweet flavor combination from the lemon juice and the confectioners’ sugar and the zest adds a bright freshness to it. While I really, really liked the muffins to me the frosting was phenomenal. It might not have been Saturday morning, but we still enjoyed them and plan to eat them for breakfast tomorrow. Russ rates the muffins a 9.