Cranberry sauce muffins クランベリーソースマフィン

We gave up some time ago on having turkey for Thanksgiving. (My wife described the turkey as a “stuffing delivery system”.) So we decided to just have the stuffing and skip the delivery system. Even though we don’t have turkey I still make “Figgy Cranberry Sauce”. It actually goes very well with other meats such as the roasted duck breast we had this year. Now after Thanksgiving, we noticed many recipes using left-over thanksgiving food started appearing on the internet. My wife found one such recipe for muffins using cranberry sauce. Although she found several recipes she settled on this particular one which was among the most straight forward. This muffin turned out to be very good.

Recipe came from Allrecipes.

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup packed brown sugar
¼ cup white sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup leftover cranberry sauce*
¾ cup milk
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 large egg, slightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

*Ingredients and directions for the figgy cranberry sauce is below.

Directions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a muffin tray’s cups with paper liners. Beat the cranberry sauce, milk, oil, egg, and vanilla together in a bowl until well combined. Whisk the flour, brown sugar, white sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, cardamom, and salt together in a separate bowl. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until the batter is just moistened. Pour into the prepared muffin cups.
Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown, about 20 minutes.

To make the figgy cranberry sauce: 

Ingredients:
Frozen or fresh cranberries (12oz bag) (Do not thaw if you are using frozen).
Dried figs, coarsely chopped (1 cup)
Sugar 1/2 cup
White wine 3/4 cup
Orange peel, 2 long strips without pith
Salt, a pinch
Orange flavored liquor (I used triple sec), 2 tbs

Directions:
1. Soak the figs in hot water for 20 minutes.
2. In a sauce pan, add the wine and sugar on medium flame. Once it starts to boil reduce the heat and mix to dissolve the sugar.
3.Add, the cranberries, drained figs, orange peel and cook for 10 -15 minutes stirring occasionally until the sauce thickens.
4. Cut the flame and add a pinch of salt and the orange liquor and mix.

These muffins were quite good. They don’t taste of cranberries per se; the added spices are the predominant flavors. The cranberry sauce does however provide a small crunch element from the very small seeds either in the cranberries or the figs which is a nice unexpected addition to the texture. Also, since I did not remove the orange peel I used in the sauce it appeared as a surprise burst of orange flavor in random bites of the muffins.

Fig and Edible Chrysanthemum Salad 無花果と春菊の甘酢あえ

A few days ago, we got some mission figs. Since figs tend to get moldy rather quickly, I processed them meaning I quartered them and then marinated them in Triple Sec (this is our standard method for prolonging the shelf life of many fruits). Since we had a lot of other fruit (especially grapes) to eat, we forgot about the figs for a while. When I checked, they were still good thanks to the liquor. Instead of eating them as is, I made this small salad with edible chrysanthemum. This was inspired by this blog I follow. The edible chrysanthemum is from Weee. Some time ago, we got it for sukiyaki but somehow we did not have the sukiyaki. So, I blanched and froze it. I thawed and used it for this dish. The fig was quite nice and sweet which made this dish.

This is not a quite a recipe but I used my home-made sweet vinegar and a dash of x4 concentrated noodle sauce for dressing. I served this one evening as part of an “Otsumami” drinking snack line-up. The figs were sweet and slightly sour from the vinegar in the dressing with a slight crunch from the seeds. The chrysanthemum provided a slightly bitter contrast that added to the overall complex flavor of the dish.

Fig (stuffed) muffin 無花果入りのマフィン

Recently, we reorganized our book shelves and during this process, my wife found quite a few cookbooks which we forgot we had. One of which was a small book called "Mostly Muffins". It was published in 1984 but it appears to be still available on Amazon. As a devotee of stuffed muffins, my wife could not pass this one up. So this is a fig muffin (first picture). She managed to place the stuffing in the center without any gaping space around the stuffing.

The fig stuffing definitely gave nice slightly sweet and figgy taste and nice slightly chewy texture.

As usual, I ask my wife to take over the rest.

Ingredients:
For fig filling
1/2 lb dried figs, trimmed and chopped
1/2 cup triple sec (original recipe calls for freshly squeezed orange juice which we did not have).
3 tbs honey
1 1/2 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice

For muffin batter
1 1/4 cup AP flour
3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter melted and cooled
1/2 cup sugar plus 1 Tbs. molasses (original recipe calls for dark brown sugar)
1/4 cup honey
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 tsp orange flavoring
3/4 cup triple sec (original recipe calls for orange juice).

Double recipe:
Ingredients:
For fig filling
1 lb dried figs, trimmed and chopped
1 cup triple sec (original recipe calls for freshly squeezed orange juice which we did not have).
6 tbs honey
 Tbs. fresh squeezed lemon juice

For muffin batter
2 1/2 cup AP flour

1 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
2  tsp baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup unsalted butter melted and cooled
1 cup sugar plus 2 Tbs. molasses (original recipe calls for dark brown sugar)
1/2 cup honey
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp orange flavoring 
1 1/2 cups triple sec (original recipe calls for orange juice).


Directions:
For the filling:
In as small saucepan combine the filling ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer covered for 20 minutes. If there is excess liquid remove the cover and reduce until thickened. (In this batch all the liquid was absorbed.) Cool slightly then place in a food processor fitted with a steel blade and process for 30 seconds until puréed. Set aside.

For the dough:
Liberally grease the muffin tins. In a large bowl mix the dry ingredients. In another bowl mix the wet ingredients. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Add half the dough to the bottom of the muffin cups. Top with the fig mixture. Don’t let the fig mixture touch the side of the muffin cups. Top the fig mixture with the remaining half of the dough. The next picture shows the muffins partially assembled; 8 muffin tins are shown half filled with the fig mixture and 4 muffin tins completely assembled with the fig mixture covered. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown. Let cool for about 5 minutes and remove from the tins to a cooling rack.

The next picture shows the muffins just as they came out of the oven. 

This is a quite unique and nice muffin. They actually came out much better than expected.  I am not sure what difference substituting orange flavored liquor (triple sec) for the orange juice had but certainly the end result was very good. The muffin had a very tender texture and the fig filling added a mild sweetness. The slight crunch from the fig seeds in the fig mixture was a bit of a surprise but added an additional crunch element that was quite nice. They also provided inspiration on how to make muffins stuffed with other dried fruits...like persimmon...maybe.