Raspberry Streusel Muffins, More Butterflies, and Leaves

After promising to make some homemade muffins yesterday and then conveniently forgetting (heh heh heh) I woke up this morning and started searching for the perfect recipe.

I came across a baking blog called Baking Bites that had a recipe for Raspberry Streusel Muffins. I had a huge tub of raspberries in the fridge to use up so I went ahead and tried them out.

These muffins were like juicy little cakes. SO GOOD I can't even tell you.

Raspberry Streusel Muffins

Source: Baking Bites
Makes: 12 muffins

Streusel Topping

2/3 cup all purpose flour

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/8 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground ginger (I used cinnamon)

4 tbsp butter, cold

Muffins

2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3 tbsp butter, melted and cooled

1 cup sugar

1 large egg

3/4 cup buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp almond extract

1 1/2 cups frozen raspberries (I used fresh)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a standard muffin tin with 12 paper liners.

In a small bowl, make the streusel topping. Stir together all dry ingredients, then cut the butter into small pieces and add to flour mixture. Rub in butter thoroughly until mixture is very fine and sandy. Pick up the streusel mixture and squeeze it in your hand to form small clumps, repeating until streusel appears to have a much coarser texture. Set aside.

Next, make the muffin batter. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. In a large bowl, stir together melted butter, sugar and egg until well combined. Stir in half the flour mixture, followed by the buttermilk, vanilla and almond extracts. Stir in remaining flour mixture, mixing just until the dry ingredients are incorporated and no streaks of flour remain. Fold in raspberries (toss frozen berries in 2 tsp of flour to keep them from “bleeding” into the muffin batter).

Divide muffin batter evenly into prepared baking cups. Cups will be fairly full. Divide streusel mixture over the muffins (be generous, and don’t worry if some of the streusel doesn’t seem to “stick”).

Bake for 20-23 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out with only a few moist crumbs attached.

Turn muffins out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Cooled muffins can be stored in an airtight container.

*Note: If using fresh berries, you may need to reduce the baking time by 1-2 minutes. (I baked mine for 18 minutes).

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A long time ago I used a craft punch to make a butterfly collage for a friend's baby shower gift. I recently found out that another friend was expecting a girl and was doing a butterfly theme in her nursery.

 

So I busted out my craft punch again and created a new set of matching butterfly prints. This time I tried out some dark frames to match the crib in my friend's nursery. I also used a bit more blue to tie in the wall colour that she used. They turned out pretty darn cute just like last time. 

 

 

 

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Al and I just finished doing a team front-yard-clean-up. There were soooooo many leaves out front that we decided to be lazy and use the lawnmower to chop up the leaves and the lawnmower bag to suck 'em all up. Little did we know that we would only be able to do ONE STRIP of the yard before emptying the bag. We came up with a good system though. I mowed a strip, Alex emptied the lawnmower bag. I mowed another strip, Alex emptied the lawnmower bag. It was like I had my own little lawn boy at my beck and call. Heh heh heh.

 

 

The sad part is that our silver maple still has almost all it's leaves and we'll have to do hours more raking or mowing in a few more weeks. See? Check it out. After a 1/2 hour, look how many leaves have fallen!?!?!? NOOOOOOOOOO!

 

;)