Pistachio & Apricot Muffins, Again

You can see the other two posts in this "series" here.

When I started the second batch of these muffins, I thought I would do a series. Each month, I would try changing a single ingredient, hopefully different results each time. Maybe good, but more importantly, show how changing one ingredient affects things. My own little kitchen laboratory! These muffins were perfect as a test subject. The first batch was not so good but it had potential. The flavors were there but they were trapped in a cast of flour. I couldn't help thinking, you had these flavors to work with and yet this is the recipe you published?

Last time, I sweetened the muffins with honey instead of sugar. This month the plan was to just reduce the flour. But I stopped to think about all the other things I want to do and I asked myself, do I want to make a batch of these muffins every month?

No, I do not.

So my plan changed. I did more than just reduce the flour. I added baking powder to provide more lift. I don't think the self-rising flour was doing a good job on its own. A couple people who tried the previous batch of muffins said they couldn't really taste the pistachios. Well, the honey was partly to blame for that but still I ground some pistachios and added that to the flour so there is a slight hint of pistachio throughout without turning these into mini-nutbreads. I kept the brandy in and it was much easier making the apricot puree this way. The glaze adds some shine and a touch of sweetness.

OK, this time I think I've got it. I like how these turned out. Still not light as air but definitely not the hard flour biscuits they were before. You can taste the pistachio throughout and it was the apricot supplying the sweetness this time. The chopped pistachios gave it a little tooth also. This is a good recipe to end this "series" on.


Pistachio & Apricot Muffins
even more remotely based on the Pistachio & Apricot recipe on page 274 of the 500 Cupcakes: The Only Cupcake Compendium You'll Ever Need by Fergal Connolly.

Makes 12 regular sized muffins

1 1/3 cups (8 oz) + enough for decorating dried apricots
4 tbsp. brandy
3 cups (12 3/4 oz) self-rising flour
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup (3 1/2 oz) + 1 oz. + enough for decorating shelled pistachios
3 Tbsp. honey
1 Tbsp. water

Give the apricots a rough chop and soak them in the brandy for about a hour. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Using a food processor, grind the 1 oz. of pistachios into a meal, as fine as you can get it. In a medium sized bowl, whisk the ground pistachios, flour, and baking powder together. Place the apricots and the brandy in a food processor and puree them until smooth. In another bowl, beat the eggs slightly to break up the yolks. Add the sugar, buttermilk, and the apricots and mix them together. Cut the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles breadcrumbs. Combine all the ingredients into the bowl with the flour and butter and stir until everything is just combined. Spoon the mixture evenly into baking cups. I use a 1/4 cup ice cream scoop to measure and place the batter in the cups. Decorate with a bit of apricot and some pistachios. Bake for 25 minutes, checking after about 20 minutes. These are done when a cake tester or toothpick comes out cleanly. Let sit in the pan for 5 minutes and then cool on a wire rack. While they are cooling, mix the honey and water and warm a bit to make it easier to combine. Brush a light coating of the glaze onto the muffins.


OK, all said and done, if I do make these again I would probably swap out the buttermilk for a full cup of whole milk. Oh, and I also started thinking the dryness comes not only from the amount of flour but dried apricots soaking up liquids which hindsight being 20/20, I should have thought of sooner. All right, I'll stop.

Pistachio & Apricot Muffins, Take Two

Last month I tried a recipe for pistachio & apricot muffins that I didn't like. It was heavy on the flour and the muffins were dry. I liked the combo of pistachios and apricots so I vowed to try again. This past weekend I did.

Rather than go all nuts swapping out ingredients and changing quantities right away, I decided to change the recipe slightly. Instead of superfine sugar, I used honey. I did this to add sweetness but more importantly, moisture. The first batch was very dry and hard to mix together. This batch was still a little sticky but was much easier to fold the ingredients. So here is the changed recipe.

Pistachio & Apricot Muffins
based on the Pistachio & Apricot recipe on page 274 of the 500 Cupcakes: The Only Cupcake Compendium You'll Ever Need by Fergal Connolly.

Makes 16 regular sized muffins

1 1/3 cups (8 oz) dried apricots
4 tbsp. brandy
4 cups (17 oz) self-rising flour
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
3/4 cup honey
2 eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 teas. + a pinch baking soda
1/2 cup (3 1/2 oz) shelled pistachios

Give the apricots a rough chop and soak them in the brandy for about a hour. Preheat the oven to 325° F. Remove the apricots from the brandy and puree them in a food processor until smooth. Some small chunks of apricot is fine. In a medium sized bowl, cut the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs and then dust with the additional baking soda. In another bowl, beat the eggs slightly to break up the yolks. Add the honey, buttermilk, and the apricots and mix them together. Combine all the ingredients into the bowl with the flour and butter and stir until everything is just combined. Spoon the mixture evenly into baking cups. I use a 1/4 cup ice cream scoop to measure and place the batter in the cups. Bake for 20-25 minutes, checking after about eighteen minutes. These are done when a cake tester or toothpick comes out cleanly.

These turned out better. The muffins rose more while baking and weren't so dense. Still, they are not light and fluffy. You could taste the apricots and honey but it still had a slight flour taste. These were also sweeter than the previous batch. The taste does improve with age. Lorrie mentioned the picture looks like a jalapeno corn muffin and while that definitely doesn't describe the flavor, that observation is spot-on to the feel and texture of this muffin.

But I think I can do better, maybe next time I'll try reducing the flour. Check back after the holiday season for the next episode of what is now becoming a regular series, Pistachio & Apricot Muffins.

Also, I know the name is Cookies, Et Cetera so you'd think there would be more cookies on this site. Well, all I can say is they're coming. I may have been focusing on the 'et cetera' part for a little bit but in December I will definitely be baking more cookie recipes and sharing them here.

Pumpkin Muffins

This past Sunday I tried a second recipe from the latest book in my collection, 500 Cupcakes: The Only Cupcake Compendium You'll Ever Need. I was not thrilled with how the Pistachio & Apricot Muffins turned out and when I needed to make my Halloween cupcakes I went elsewhere for recipes I trusted more. However, I don't want to condemn a book from one bad recipe and other recipes that seemed very different than recipes from other books so I made a batch of cupcakes using a different recipe. I'm glad I did. This time things turned out much better.

Pumpkins are everywhere this time of year so I tried the Halloween Pumpkin Muffins from page 198 of 500 Cupcakes. Unlike the last muffin recipe I tried from this book, the dry ingredients to wet ingredients ratio was more on par with what I expected. A major difference this time was the amount of flour was less than half the Pistachio & Apricot Muffins. Also, no butter. This recipe called for vegetable oil. Flavoring was pumpkin puree, cinnamon, and allspice. I used canned pumpkin and I don't regret it one bit. I made my own fresh pumpkin last year and it was fine and all but a lot more work (I roasted) for results that were a little better. Not to say I wouldn't do it again, especially if I was making a soup or something and wanted to use the pumpkin halves as bowls or if I got a really good deal on pumpkin. It's just in my opinion the canned pumpkin is pretty good for something coming in a metal container. But I'm digressing. I combined the dry ingredients and the wet separately and then folded the dry in until they were just mixed.

Now here's where the book got a little screwy. The recipe says this makes 6 large muffins. When I hear large muffins, I think of ones bigger than my fist, six to a pan large. The muffins you get at a coffee shoppe and you need both hands to carry the plate kind of big. The intro caption for this recipe says "Decorate these cupcakes with skeletons for when the trick-or-treaters come calling." I'm reading the recipe thinking, yeah, these trick-or-treaters are going to work themselves into a frenzy when I pop open the door and reward their shy/enthusiastic "Trick-or-treat!" with a frosted muffin the size of their head! But that's not the picture the book gives me to use as a guide. The picture given with the recipe shows what I consider a standard size, twelve to a pan size. Reality is there is enough batter to make six large or twelve regular muffins but still a little weird. These really were good looking muffins coming out of the oven. The book has these cupcakes with cut-out fondant but I didn't want to do that, I was planning on using a cream cheese frosting. I didn't have a chance to make a homemade frosting for these so I just used one of the store bought whipped varieties. To top them off, little candy sprinkles shaped and colored like autumn leaves.

I liked these muffins. They were moist and tasted wonderful. The cream cheese frosting was a good choice flavorwise. The pumpkin flavor of the muffin was strong and matched well with the frosting. The candy sprinkles not only added color but a little crunch too when you bit into them. I know these went fast when Lorrie took them to work. I would definitely recommend this recipe.

OK, 500 Cupcakesis now one for two as far as the recipes are concerned. I want to try one or two more before I post of review of the book. I'm hoping the other recipes turn out like this.

Pistachio & Apricot Muffins

Lorrie gave me a new book last week called 500 Cupcakes: The Only Cupcake Compendium You'll Ever Need. We saw this at Borders earlier while looking for a cookbook for a gift and thought it was interesting. So Lorrie's mom was visiting us last week but she was leaving Sunday morning. Early Sunday morning, like before the paper even gets there early. I thought it would be nice to make her some muffins to eat on her trip. 500 Cupcakesnot only has cupcake recipes but also muffins (the author considers them a subset of cupcakes. Whatever.) Lorrie likes pistachio nuts so I thought the Pistachio and Apricot Muffin recipe on page 274 might be a good recipe to try.

It wasn't. The recipe calls for 4 cups of self-rising flour, dried apricots (though soaked in brandy and then drained), sugar, and pistachio nuts versus a small amount of butter, buttermilk, and a couple of eggs. Mixing the batter was like mixing paste, very tough. Still I got it to the point where it was just mixed and into the pan. Once baked they were dry, a little heavy, and the flour overpowered the ingredients. Not horrible mind you, they were edible but they weren't the apricoty-pistachio goodness I was hoping for.

That said, I think this can be the basis for a good recipe. I will go through and see if I can improve the recipe. I looked around in the book and this seems to be the only one so far that called for that much flour so I haven't given up on the book.