I have a newfound appreciation for oranges. Citrus fruit is at its peak here in the wintertime, but in the past I’ve always shunned oranges in favor of my beloved lemons.

Recently I’ve been buying a lot more fruit, and as I’ve been looking around grocery stores for the best-looking produce, I’ve given oranges another try. I’m happily realizing that there’s such a huge variety of types (shapes, sizes, and colors) to play with. I’m sure my little orange friends will keep me entertained until spring rolls around.

I made these muffins with one of my new favorites, cara cara oranges. They’re delicate, thin-skinned, and resemble pink grapefruit on the inside. I also used the blueberries we picked last summer, which is always a special treat. These muffins are incredibly light; the texture was among the best of any muffin I’ve made. Also, like many of Dorie Greenspan’s recipes, they’re really versatile, so feel free to play with your fruit.

Orange Blueberry Muffins
Adapted from Dorie Greenspan
Makes 12 muffins
Printable Recipe

Grated zest and juice of one orange
About 3/4 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons honey
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/3 cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking power
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup blueberries, fresh or frozen (not thawed)
Turbinado sugar, for topping (optional)

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 400F. Grease a regular 12-cup muffin pan with non-stick baking spray or line with paper liners. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

2. Pour the orange juice into a large glass measuring cup or a bowl and pour in enough buttermilk to make 1 cup. Whisk in the eggs, honey, and melted butter.

3. In a large bowl, rub the sugar and orange zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and the fragrance of orange is strong. Whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough. The batter will be lumpy and bubbly. Stir in the blueberries, and divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

4. Bake for 20-25 minutes. If you want to top the muffins with turbinado sugar, sprinkle on after the muffins have baked for 10 minutes. When fully baked, the muffins will be golden and springy to the touch and a tester inserted into the center will come out clean. Allow to cool on a rack for 5 minutes before removing the muffins from the pan.

After nearly a month of waiting on my Sur la Table cassis french oven to arrive (what a nightmare!) it finally landed in the Financial District around the 12th of February. Our dear friend had entered into a Valentines Day Chili cook-off, and wouldn’t you know… he put out an email alert that he was in need of a large Dutch oven. Mr. D offered up our Le Creuset, and I have not seen it again since! Boo!

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I thought I’d share my favorite recipe for banana bread this week, perhaps one of you will try the recipe and I can live vicariously through you? {winkwink} Without further ado, here is the ‘My-oh-my I am dying to blow off some steam and bake a Banana Bread’ recipe:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees (then lower to 250 for second half hour)
Bake time: 60 minutes 30 minutes at 350, 30 minutes at 250

Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
3 super ripe bananas (the browner, the better!)
1 1/3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup chopped walnuts – totally optional
pinch of salt

Directions:
Cream butter and sugar. Mix in eggs. Add in bananas. Continue to cream together ingredients until everything is incorporated. Slowly add flour, soda, powder, salt. Add optional walnuts last.

Bake in a greased and lightly floured loaf pan.

Enjoy warm with a hot cup of coffee and a smear of butter ~ delish!

Allow me to introduce you to my first foray into the wonderful world of Paula Deen. Baked French Toast with Praline Topping. I could probably say this about all of her recipes, but I can’t imagine a richer, more decadent, and more delicious way to start my day than with a hunk of this stuff.

Making this recipe was an interesting exercise in editing. I found it on the Food Network website, where, last time I checked, the recipe had 1,277 comments. While the overall rating of the recipe was 5 stars out of a possible 5, fans had lots to say about how to improve or tweak this dish for the best possible results. I actually really enjoyed the process of whittling through just a few pages of those 1,277 comments and trying to decide which tips and modifications I was going to follow (the recipe below reflects my changes).

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Pumpkin is my new best friend. I made cheesecake bars, I made whoopie pies, I made pancakes, and still I couldn’t get enough. I was on the hunt for a new and different pumpkin recipe to try when I came across these muffins.

It was love at first sight.

You can’t tell from the photo, but there’s a nugget of cream cheese inside each one of these moist, perfectly spiced little guys. I’d love to try this again with my mini muffin pan to make even cuter, smaller muffin babies. This is one of those baked goods that causes involuntary smiling as a side effect of its deliciousness. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Streusel Muffins
Adapted from Annie’s Eats, originally from Bakespace
Printable Recipe
Makes 24 muffins

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Lemon and any kind of berry is one of my favorite flavor combos. Makes sense, since lemon and berries are both in my top 5 favorite foods/flavors ever (for the record: rice, Asian cuisine, tomatoes, lemons, berries). Ok, I know that listing Asian cuisine is cheating since it’s so broad, but I don’t care, I love it all!

I recently came across this recipe from Deb at Smitten Kitchen using her “Surprise Me” feature. You just click the button and it takes you to a random recipe from Deb’s archives. I’m highly amused by this and have been known to press “surprise me” repeatedly for hours, since I have something to learn from every one of her posts, both about cooking and photography. Whenever I’m bored or can’t sleep, this is my favorite go-to activity.

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I’m only posting this because I want to be like Sharon and other foodie bloggers:) I don’t have any real recipes to share…..except for this one. Nate started making this homemade granola a few months ago and it took me awhile to fall in love, but now I’m a goner. I could eat this stuff three times a day and not get sick of it.

Now I know what you are thinking: Granola? Really? Talk about your stereotypical tree hugger grub. But once you try it I think you’ll agree that this is the best snack/breakfast ever. Did you hear that challenge? :)

So, ingredients:

• 2 cups Rolled Oats [not the instant kind]
• 1 cup of almonds [pre-sliced are way easier, as an FYI]
• 1/4 cup of sesame seeds [optional]
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/4 cup of wheat germ AND/OR flax seed [this is where it gets really healthy!]
• 1/2 cup coconut
• 1/2 cup of raisins [but don't dump them in yet!]
• 1/2 cup of other dried fruit [our faves are orange flavored cranberries]
• scant 1/4 cup of cooking oil [I'll explain later]
• 1/2 cup of honey
• vanilla extract to taste

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I’ve loved The Pioneer Woman for as long as I’ve known blogs existed. I especially love her cooking site, which is always chock-full of butter, cream, sugar, oil, and all the things that make food taste good.

The amounts of these ingredients in her food are perfect for salivating over from afar (especially with her amazing, detailed step-by-step photos), but I had never actually made one of her recipes until yesterday. This blueberry yogurt pound cake is more like a zucchini or banana bread than a pound cake (although I don’t know the technical difference), and feels relatively “healthy” due to its conspicuous lack of butter. That is, of course, if you ignore the copious amounts of sugar.

This one’s definitely a keeper!

Blueberry Yogurt Pound Cake
Adapted from The Pioneer Woman

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 6-ounce cartons yogurt, any flavor (Amy’s note: I used Yoplait Light blueberry)
1 ¼ cups sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup blueberries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a loaf pan.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In a separate bowl, mix together yogurt, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and oil until just combined. Pour over dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Gently stir in 1 cup blueberries. Do not overbeat.

Pour into a loaf pan and bake for 60-70 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

The holiday weekend is so close I can almost taste it! One of my favourite things about having an extra day off is whipping up something special for breakfast after a late sleep-in. And these muffins are just the ticket! They’re so light and fluffy, not dense like many muffin recipes I’ve come across. Yet they really satsify–just one is enough to keep you going strong ’til that picnic lunch in the park. But go ahead and have two just for the heck of it. I won’t tell!

Conceivably you could use this recipe as the basis for any combination of mix-in’s. Peaches and pecans would be nice, and chocolate chips would be divine! I could even see playing around with a blend of 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup cornmeal. You have complete freedom–and isn’t that what a long weekend is all about?

Long Weekend Blueberry Muffins
1 c. all purpose flour
1/3 c. sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
1 large egg
1 1/2 Tbsp vegetable oil (I used melted butter instead)
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 c. plain lowfat yogurt or sour cream
1/4 c. milk
1 c. fresh or frozen blueberries
cinnamon sugar for dusting (just mix one part cinnamon with one part white sugar)

Directions:
-Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line or grease 6 muffin cups.
-In medium bowl, combine flour sugar, baking powder, soda, salt and whisk to combine thoroughly.
-Toss blueberries in dry ingredients, coating completely to keep them from bleeding juice into the batter.
-In large bowl, combine egg, oil, vanilla, yogurt, milk and whisk to combine thoroughly.
-Fold dry ingredients into wet and stir until just combined (will be lumpy and thick.)
-Using ice cream scoop to spoon, divide batter evenly amongst muffin cups.
-Generously sprinkle tops of muffins with cinnamon sugar.
-Place in oven and bake until toothpick inserted in center of muffin is removed clean, about 12-15 minutes.
-Remove from oven and let cool in tins for 2 minutes.
-Let cool completely on wire rack or devour immediately!