Welcome, Neighbor!

We have a new neighbor now so I wanted to bring some baked goods over to welcome her and her children to the neighborhood. I would have loved it had someone done the same for me, so hopefully I won't come off as too June Cleaver. I didn't want to do just cookies (though I make a mean chocolate chip cookie) and I had some buttermilk to use up from those gosh darn biscuits, so these muffins made the cut. I found them on Annie's blog and have wanted to make them ever since.

These muffins may be the most wonderful baked good I have ever put in my mouth. No joke. They were moist. They were sweet, but not too sweet. The cinnamon sugar top made the muffin absolutely perfect. I could have eaten dozens of them! Luckily, the recipe only made 9 and I was giving most of them away. As of now, however, I still have them all because the neighbor hasn't been home when I have. Hopefully I can catch her this weekend; otherwise these muffins will be gone!

If you make these muffins, don't change a thing. They are perfect and there is no reason to mess with perfection. Trust me!

Cinnamon Buttermilk Muffins

from Williams and Sonoma

7 T unsalted butter, at room temperature

2/3 c sugar

1 egg

1 1/2 c all-purpose flour

1 1/2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

1/2 t freshly grated nutmeg

1/2 c buttermilk

1 1/2 t vanilla extract

2/3 c sugar

1 T ground cinnamon

6 T (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, melted

Preheat an oven to 350°F. Grease 9 standard muffin cups with butter or butter-flavored nonstick cooking spray; fill the unused cups one-third full with water to prevent warping.

To make the muffins, in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, combine the butter and sugar and beat on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add the egg and beat well until pale and smooth.In another bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg. Add to the butter mixture in 2 additions, alternating with the buttermilk and vanilla. Stir just until evenly moistened. The batter will be slightly lumpy.

Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups, filling each three-fourths full. Bake until the muffins are golden, dry and springy to the touch and a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool for 5 minutes. Unmold the muffins and let stand until cool enough to handle.

To make the topping, in a small, shallow bowl, stir together the sugar and cinnamon (you won't need this much- I only used about half this much. Ditto for the butter). Put the melted butter in another small bowl. Holding the bottom of a muffin, dip the top into the melted butter, turning to coat it evenly. Immediately dip the top in the cinnamon-sugar mixture, coating it evenly, then tap it to remove excess sugar. Transfer the muffin, right side up, to the rack. Repeat with the remaining muffins. Let cool completely before serving.

Makes 9 muffins.

Crying?! There's no crying in baking!

Biscuits. I was terrified to make them and I think they knew. I pulled out my Alton Brown cookbook to find the perfect scientifically based biscuit recipe. I found it. He promised me I would have award winning biscuits. He has yet to fail me, so I jumped in. I froze the butter. I grated it into the dry ingredients. I rubbed in the butter instead of cut. I bought an enormous tub of plain yogurt because he said it makes them fluffier. I mixed. I turned it out onto floured waxed paper. And this is what I got:

Which turned into this:

And finally this:

I was incredibly frustrated in the kitchen and my husband had to yell from our dining room in progress that they were only biscuits. He just has no idea. I hate kitchen failures! Once I decided to just throw the mess away, I looked in my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook for another biscuit recipe. Turns out I didn't have enough flour to try again because I had wasted two cups on this disaster. Sigh. I ended up walking to Aldi's to buy buttermilk biscuits in a tube and a bag of flour. I'm not seeing another biscuit attempt in my near future, but at least now I have the flour.

While the biscuits may have been my greatest cooking disaster to date, my sausage gravy and eggs turned out quite yummy. I used a recipe I got off the Nest a long time ago, I think from nestie TexasSmith (It was Krashed24, from this blog. Sorry Amber!). It turned out much better then the darn biscuits. The eggs were nothing special, but I did snip in some chives and I always whisk in water, not milk, to make the eggs super fluffy. While my "breakfast" wasn't actually finished until 1:15 in the afternoon, I at least got to eat some pretty tasty gravy. It was even made with fresh from the hog sausage. My mother-in-law sent us home with a few pounds of a friend's pig, so I figured gravy was the way to go. Very tasty.

Sausage Gravy

from Amber

1 lb pork sausage

2 T chopped onion

6 T flour (I used more since I used skim milk)

4 c milk

1/2 t sage (I used poultry seasoning because some caterpillar decided to eat my fresh herbs)

1/4 t salt

black pepper

In a large skillet over medium heat, cook the sausage and onion until sausage is no longer pink. Drain, reserving 2 T drippings (my sausage didn't get any drippings, so I melted in some butter). Stir flour into sausage and drippings until blended. Cook and stir until light golden brown. Add seasonings, then gradually stir in milk. Bring to a boil. Cook and stir until desired consistency.

A Lovely Saturday Morning Suprise

While most of the kitchen duties are mine, my husband has decided that he needs his own "specialty" that I am not allowed to make. One of these "specialties" is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, though I have informed him that something a toddler can make is not a specialty. I am, however, quite fond of his other speciality- weekend pancakes.


Early in our marriage, he became fascinated by pancakes and started tinkering in the kitchen on Saturday and Sunday mornings. He had a few minor disasters, but has since come up with a wonderful "secret" recipe for very tasty pancakes. Using either a box mix or Alton Brown's recipe for pancake mix, he adds orange juice in place of some of the milk. The exact measurements are top secret, either because he doesn't want to share or he doesn't know because it is never the same twice.


This particularly morning I woke up to this fabulous spread on our kitchen table (please excuse the mess; we are still working on the sun room).




As a fun bonus to this morning's pancakes, he added some fresh berries for a lovely presentation. Mine had blueberries:




His had strawberries:





My handsome hubby/chef!