Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

  Banana Muffins After not getting together all summer today our watercolor group met again to paint together. I didn't know if anyone else was bringing anything, but I didn't want to arrive empty handed.  I didn't have a lot of time, but I did have 3 ripe bananas on the counter. Rather than wait for a banana bread to bake, I decided to make Banana Muffins . I used  this recipe  from Sally's Baking Addiction blog.  It's called Quick and Easy and that's exactly what it is. You can melt the butter and you don't have to use a mixer. I didn't change or add anything. They baked up quickly in 14 minutes, now that my oven temperature no longer seems to be running low. I was surprised at the deep golden color, very nice, no doubt from the brown sugar and the cinnamon. They tasted very good, as well. Very soft and moist for a muffin, and not too sweet.  I'm sure they'd be very good with added walnuts, too. An easy solution!

 Last night we enjoyed fresh corn on the cob with dinner, and there was one cob left over. Seeing it in the refrigerator gave me the idea to make Honey Corn Muffins . I've yet to find a recipe I like, so I decided to try something new from the internet. I came upon  this recipe  on a website I'd never seen before (Jessica Gavin). I liked that it incorporated fresh corn, so I decided to try it. Immediately upon getting the ingredients I realized I didn't have enough honey. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup but I only had 1/4 cup.  But as Julia Child says, "make the recipe anyway"!  Instead of the missing 1/4 cup of honey I added 1/4 cup of light brown sugar. The ingredients come together very quickly, no mixer required. The batter is very liquidy!   The recipe says to bake the muffins at 400F for 15 minutes. But a review from a reader who made the muffins noted that they didn't rise. It does have 1 tablespoon of baking powder, quite a bit. There's no way to ...

 This morning's blueberries weren't very good on their own, and after everyone left for work and school I had a craving for muffins. Stuck at home all day with workmen replacing several windows in the house, it was a perfect day to bake up a batch! I wanted to try a recipe using oil instead of butter that would hopefully yield a moist and delicious crumb. This  is the recipe I used. I used avocado oil and instead of regular milk, I used 1/4 cup plus 2 teaspoons of almond milk. As the recipe suggested, I eyeballed the batter to get a nice scoopable consistency that wasn't too stiff but also not runny. The batter was a bit gluey and unusual looking, but it baked up very well and I was pleased with the result. Delicious muffins, without the butter! Dairy-free blueberry muffins.