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| photos by Naomi |
Mom recently went to the library and checked out half a shelf of cookbooks.
Ooooolala!
One of my favorite pastimes is thumbing through photo-filled cookbooks dreaming of new recipe ideas.
So, it was a great pleasure to lounge around at Dad and Mom's for several hours last week looking through recipe after recipe in Mom's library books.
My favorite cookbook of the week was called Cherry Home Companion (ha- cleaver pun), and was full of recipes that highlight Michigan's abundant cherry crop (over 70% of the nation's tart cherry crop is grown in our very own Mitten!).
I think it's honest to say that our family really enjoys cherries, especially tart ones. We even have our own family cherry pie game... boys against girls for who can find the most pits when we have cherry pie (and, yes, we do try to pit the cherries before we make the pies! Some years the game is more numeric than others).
Anyway- I jotted down a couple of recipes from the cherry cookbook, and tried the Oatmeal Cherry Muffin recipe Saturday afternoon. The chocolate and almonds were my addition, but this is pretty much the original recipe. Oooolalayum.
I hope you enjoy these muffins as much as I enjoyed mine! (I ate my jumbo muffin on the drive to the airport in the rental car Sunday morning.)
Michigan Cherry Chocolate Oatmeal Muffins
1 cup oats
1 cup flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup frozen tart cherries, coarsely chopped
optional and yummy:
almonds (I used slivered)
chocolate (I used dark)
Put oats, flour, brown sugar, and baking powder in a large mixing bowl; mix well.
Combine buttermilk, egg, oil and almond extract in a small bowl.
Pour buttermilk mixture into oat mixture; stir just to moisten ingredients.
Quickly stir in cherries. (It is not necessary to thaw cherries before chopping and adding to batter), and optional ingredients if desired.
Spray muffin pan with non-stick spray. Fill muffin cups. Bake at 400F for 15 to 20 minutes or until done.
Makes twelve regular muffins. (I doubled the recipe for 9 jumbo muffins.)
from Cherry Home Companion cookbook by Patty LaNoue Stearns
I first read your sentence as "checked out a shelf of cookies" and thought wow! The Midland library is even better than it used to be! (Now I want a library with this feature... :-D)
ReplyDeleteWe tried these this morning, Julie, with significant changes due to diet and missing ingredients.:-) Used wheat flour, coconut flour instead of oats, olive oil, honey and agave instead of brown sugar, sour milk instead of buttermilk, frozen strawberries instead of cherries, and left out the almonds but kept the chocolate. They were still fabulous! Moist and hearty, with a chocolate-covered strawberry flavor. Thanks for posting!--Betsy
ReplyDeleteYay! Thanks for the comment.
DeleteMade these this morning. My only complaint is that they were so good, we ate them all already.
ReplyDeleteI think it's time for me to make another batch too. Maybe I'll share with my friends at the office.
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