Krusteaz One Step Blueberry Muffins

A couple of weeks ago my dad sent me an absolutely fantastic care package.

One of the things that I was excited to try was the One Step Blueberry Muffins from Krusteaz.

I made their crumb cake box mix all the time so I was interested to see what one of their other products was like.  Although I did feel like I was completely cheating by making something so oversimplified with only water as an added ingredient.  I went ahead and tried it anyway.

Here's what the mix itself looks like:

The only thing you had to do to prepare it for pouring into the pans was to add water and shake it.  

So I shook and shook and shook:

One thing I will note about it is that there should probably be some sort of warning that shaking it too hard or too long creates pressure in the bottle.  It surprised the crap out of me when I opened it to pour it.

It looked pretty much how I expected it to when I opened it. Although I was a little surprised at how cylindrical the "blueberries" were. I'll never get used to the look or taste of fake blueberries:

The mix was supposed to make six muffins but apparently the muffin pan I have is ridiculously oversized because I barely got four out of them. Oh well, into the oven they went:

They didn't end up rising all that much, or getting much of a muffin-y top. But even though they looked more like biscuits, they tasted like muffins:

So overall, they weren't the best muffins I've ever made or eaten, but they were certainly the easiest by far. 

Madeleines With Dad

My first recipe to be posted on here featuring my dad!  He's basically one of the biggest reasons that I got into baking in the first place, and food in general.  

Anyway, my big gift for him from Paris was a french pastry book for us to translate and use together.  For whatever reason, we didn't use it to make these madeleines, but we used a recipe from Julia Child instead.  It was a great recipe though, and turned out pretty much as we expected, not as big and rounded as the ones I had in France, but I'm beginning to think that's a different recipe because when I googled Madeleine recipes I got a few different kinds.

The first thing you have to do is melt and clarify the butter.  I'm going to emphasize this because I didn't realize what the recipe meant by this when I made it so I almost messed up big time.  Basically you just need to melt the butter and allow it to cool in some sort of container that you can use to pout off the top (yellow) layer to use in your madeleines.  The bottom will be white solids that you don't want to use:

My dad whipped the eggs and sugar  by hand.  Our recipe was a little bit different, it also had us temper the eggs and sugar before beating it.

Add in the dry ingredients:

Then add the butter, which should look like this if clarified:

Add in and mix thoroughly:

Pour into your prepared pan and bake!

And just for fun, a picture of my gigantic bottle of vanilla, and the spiced rum that we put in ours:

Adapted from Patisserie Lerch, via Paris Sweets

Recipe from Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients:

3/4 cup (105 grams) all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon double-acting baking soda

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1/2 cup (100 grams) sugar

Grated zest of 1 lemon

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

5 tablespoons (2 1/2 ounces; 70 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Sift together the flour and baking powder and keep close at hand. 

Working in a mixer fit with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs and sugar together on medium-high speed until they thicken and lighten in color, 2 to 4 minutes. Beat in the lemon zest and vanilla. 

Switch to a large rubber spatula and gently fold in the dry ingredients, followed by the melted butter. 

Cover the batter with plastic wrap, pressing the wrap against the surface to create an airtight seal, and chill for at least 3 hours, perhaps longer–chilling helps the batter develop its characteristic crown, known as the hump or the bump. (The batter can be kept tightly covered in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.)

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).

 If your Madeleine pan is not nonstick, generously butter it, dust the insides with flour and tap out the excess. If the pan is nonstick, you still might want to give it an insurance coating of butter and flour.

Divide the batter among the molds, filling them almost to the top. Don’t worry about smoothing the batter, it will even out as it bakes.

Bake large madeleines for 11 to 13 minutes, small ones for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the cookies are puffed and golden and spring back when touched. 

Pull the pan from the oven and remove the cookies by either rapping the pan against the counter (the madeleines should drop out) or gently running a butte knife around the edges of the cookies. Allow the madeleines to cool on a cooling rack. They can be served ever so slightly warm or at room temperature.