Gingerbread-Sour Cream Muffins

I haven't really baked much in the past week, but starting this week I'm going to start baking a lot more. Why? Because I'm in charge of making all the desserts at Thanksgiving and I want to test out a bunch of recipes to see which are best :)

This recipe isn't exactly for Thanksgiving, but it's sort of in season so I wanted to try it out. I saw these in Better homes and gardens and they looked really good. Well.. every recipe in that issue looked delicious! I think I book marked every page. These muffins aren't too sweet, which is probably why I didn't like them as much but my parents loved them! They said they're almost as good as the Zucchini Muffins. Next time, I'll probably add a little less ginger and a little more molasses, but I'll definitely make these again. They were a hit!

Gingerbread-Sour Cream Muffins

recipe from Better Homes and Gardens

Ingredients

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour or all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon ground ginger

2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon allspice or cinnamon (I used allspice)

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup butter

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 8-ounce carton sour cream

1/3 cup milk

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup mild-flavor molasses

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

2 tablespoons finely snipped crystallized ginger (I omitted this)

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 Degrees F. Grease the bottoms of twelve 2 1/2 inch muffin cups. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, stir together flour, ginger, baking powder, allspice, baking soda, and salt. Using a pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Make a well in center of flour mixture.

In another medium bowl, combine egg, sour cream, milk, brown sugar, and molasses. Add egg mixture all at once to flour mixture. Stir just until moistened (batter should be lumpy). Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups, filling each nearly full.

In small bowl, combine granulated sugar and crystallized ginger. Sprinkle over muffin batter.

Bake in the preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted near centers comes out clean. Remove from pan. Serve warm. Makes 12 muffins.

Baked Pumpkin Donuts

Ready for more pumpkin recipes? Because there's even more to come after this! I used to not like pumpkin very much at all. I would just eat the pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving and that was it. Now I think I might be a little obsessed with it. But there is a lot you can bake with pumpkin! Pumpkin can be used in so many different way which is great. I might even make pumpkin cake pops one day.

This was a fairly good recipe. But unfortunately, the directions were way off. And some of the ingredient measurements were off too. But the end result was pretty good! They don't taste like most donuts do, but that's what makes them different. I used a cinnamon sugar topping on half of them and used a cinnamon glaze on the other half. I think I liked the cinnamon glaze ones better but the cinnamon sugar ones were pretty good too. If you don't have a doughnut pan, these can easily be made as muffins too.

Baked Pumpkin Donuts
adapted from Culinary Cory

Ingredients
2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon nutmeg
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin
2 eggs
3 tablespoons milk
1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions
Preheat oven to 375 Degrees F. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, and nutmeg in medium bowl. Set aside. Cream together the butter and light brown sugar. Add the other wet ingredients and mix until well incorporated. With your mixer at medium speed, slowly add the dry sifted ingredients to the wet mixture. Mix until barely just combined. Do not over mix.

Spray the doughnut or muffin pan with cooking spray and fill each mold all the way with the pumpkin batter. Bake at 375 degrees for 10-15 minutes or until the exterior springs back when touched. Allow to cool completely before topping each doughnut with glaze or cinnamon sugar.

Cinnamon Glaze

Ingredients
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tablespoon milk
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Directions
Mix all ingredients together until mixture is slightly hard. Glaze should spread on evenly and should not be runny.

Cinnamon sugar

Ingredients
1 stick butter, melted
1 cup sugar and 1 tablespoon cinnamon mixed together.
Directions
Dip doughnuts and butter and roll in cinnamon sugar.

Recipe Yield: makes 9 Donuts