Morning Glory Muffins #MuffinMonday

Any morning can be glorious if you wake up to Morning Glory Muffins for breakfast. Chock full of goodies like carrot, pecans, apple and coconut, these beautiful muffins also make a wonderful snack or treat to bring along to a coffee klatch.

If you’ve been reading this space for a while, you have already heard me talk about the couple years we lived in Balikpapan, an oilfield town on the southeast corner of Borneo, almost 30 years ago.

It was years before the internet became the lifeline that it is now for folks in out of the way places, so we depended on our friends sharing their favorite recipes from the small stash of cookbooks or family jottings that they had brought along. That’s where I learned to make our favorite chocolate chip cookies and garlicky green beans with carrots.  And it’s where my friend MJ added sweet and sour chicken to her own family repertoire, which has now become one of ours.

Morning Glory Muffins

This recipe is another I got from a friend, after enjoying morning glory muffins at her house where we gathered weekly to play cards. Her name was Elisabeth and she was from Norway, married to an American, if I remember correctly. Of course I’ve searched for her on Facebook. I'd love to thank her again for sharing.

Pretty dog-eared and well-used, as you can see

Ingredients – for 18 muffins
2 cups or 250g flour
1 cup or 200g sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups or 245g finely grated carrot
1/2 cup or 90g raisins (I didn't have quite enough raisins so I threw in some dried cranberries.)
1/2 cup or 65g chopped nuts (I use pecans.)
1/2 cup lightly packed or 40g fresh or desiccated coconut
1 apple, peeled, cored and grated
3 eggs
1 cup or 240ml canola or other light oil
2 teaspoons vanilla


Method
Once you have all of your ingredients grated/assembled, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and grease or line a 12-cup muffin pan and a 6-cup muffin pan. This recipe makes 18 regular size muffins.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and salt.

Add in the carrot, raisins, nuts, coconut and apple. Stir well, using a fork to separate the clumps and distribute the flour throughout the wetter ingredients.

In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil and vanilla.

Fold the egg mixture into the flour mixture until just combined.

Spoon the batter into your prepared muffins pans.

Bake for 20-25 minutes in the preheated oven. Remove from the oven and cool for a few minutes on a wire rack.

These are fabulous warm or cooled. Cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

Enjoy! P.S. They freeze beautifully too!

Check out all the other lovely muffins we have for you this month! 

• Bouchon Bakery Style Carrot Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Cocoa Beet Chocolate Chip Muffins from Farm Fresh Feasts
• Lucky Charms Muffins from Palatable Pastime
• Morning Glory Muffins from Food Lust People Love
• Rice Cereal Apple Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Strawberry and Chocolate Muffin Hearts from Sew You Think You Can Cook

 #MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all our of lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday, can be found on our home page.

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Cinnamon Yogurt Muffins with Cinnamon Crumble #MuffinMonday

Yogurt adds subtle fruity flavor to this cinnamon muffin and the generous crumble is the perfect topping. 

Happy Little Christmas Eve!  And, no, that is not a holiday I just made up.  Many years ago, we were living in Balikpapan, Indonesia and our neighbor was a lovely Norwegian lady named Turid.  She was a career diplomat and had been working most recently in the embassy in Jakarta so her Indonesian was superb.  It’s not a hard language to master for everyday “market” conversation but at a business and diplomatic level, it gets much more complicated.  She had retired young to raise her daughter and had moved to Balikpapan with her husband who was working there.  Turid kindly offered to give me Indonesian lessons and, under her tutelage, I got pretty good too.  But the best part was that I also made a friend.

On December 23, she invited our family over for Lille Julaften or Little Christmas Eve, a special Norwegian celebration.  I don’t  remember the names of all the traditional cookies and cakes and dishes but everything was homemade and wonderful.  And I do recall that there was a lot of wine and beer involved.  And aquavit.  That stuff is trouble.  My advice for today is just say no to the aquavit but have a very happy Little Christmas Eve!  And perhaps bake some cinnamon yogurt muffins.

Ingredients
For the muffin batter:
2 cups or 250g all purpose flour
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 cup or 60ml milk
3/4 cup or 185g fruit yogurt of your choice (I used raspberry.)
1/2 cup or 120ml canola or other light oil
1 large egg

For the crumble:
1/4 cup or 60g butter
1/2 cup or 100g dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup or 30g flour
Pinch salt

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your muffin pan by greasing it or lining it paper muffin cups.

Start by making your crumble.  Put all of your crumble ingredients into a small bowl and use a pastry blender to cut them into each other until you have a sort of lumpy sandy mixture.  Set aside.

You should still have some small bits of butter visible. 

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, the sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.

In another bowl, whisk together the milk, yogurt, oil and egg.

Pour your wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold them together until just mixed.

Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups and top each with a generous helping of the crumble.

Bake in the preheated oven about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Cool on a rack for a few minutes and then remove the muffins to cool completely.

Enjoy!   And since this will likely be my last post before Christmas Day, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!

Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

A classic from Joy of Cooking, this oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe makes the best chewy cookies around.

We arrived in the sweltering heat and were met at the rustic terminal building by a man named Pup Joint. Back then, we meant me, my husband and one large Boxer dog.

So young! What the heck happened?

The seaside oilfield town of Balikpapan, carved out of the jungle on the southeast corner of Borneo, was as about as far as you could get, in distance and modernity to Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, where we had met six years before, in the northwest corner of the same enormous island. Of course, compared to Balikpapan, most cities were developed.

We didn’t really have a grocery store to speak of. And, back then, there was only one decent hotel in town. Other options to eat out included the local warung – small holes in the wall serving Indonesian fare – or Chinese food. So we made our own fun. We hosted game nights and potlucks and barbecues around the pool. We played card games and did needlework. There might have even been some drinking games, possibly Quarters.

I took Indonesian lessons and traveled around the region, practicing my language skills. We went SCUBA diving and I enjoyed baking and cooking, despite the limited supplies. And then the dog got a baby sister, which suddenly gave me all kinds of necessary jobs!

So young! Still just as cute now

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Telephone lines were poor and satellite television was our only real link to the outside world. The complex we lived in had one immense satellite dish with one receiver so everyone watched whatever it was tuned to and the guardhouse controlled it. We received the live feed so there were no commercials but we got to see the news anchors sipping their coffee or combing their hair or checking their teeth for lipstick between segments. It was all rather amusing. Until the time when we had a houseful of guests watching a rugby game and the guards decided to change the channel. A persuasive emissary was sent to convince them to change it back immediately.

But the single most important thing that made that little town one of our favorite places to live were the friends we made. All we had were each other. We became family. And without an English bookstore or internet, we depended on each other to share books and recipes and magazines. If you’d read something, you passed it on. And there were no secret recipes. If you made something delicious, you shared.

And that is the very long story of how I came by this recipe for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. My friend, Valorie, made these for us one day back in 1990 and I have been making them ever since. Her original recipe comes from the Joy of Cooking, and you can see from my well-worn hand-copied version that it is used often.

I am sharing it with you today, because it became a favorite with my daughters as well and was probably the one cookie I made most often for after school snacks when they lived at home. I would make a double batch of dough and bake a few that first day, then freeze the rest of the dough and they would get freshly baked cookies with minimal time and effort on many other days as well.

Today I am joining a group of avid cookie bakers called Creative Cookie Exchange started by Laura of The Spiced Life and Rebecka of At Home with Rebecka. Our theme this month is Back to School – cookies that would be great packed in lunch boxes or for an after school snack. Make sure to scroll down to see the other delicious cookies my fellow bloggers have made!

Ingredients
1/2 cup (firmly packed) or 100g brown sugar
1/2 cup or 115g granulated sugar
1/2 cup or 115g butter, softened
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 tablespoon milk
1 cup or 125g all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (bicarbonate of soda)
1/2 teaspoon double-acting baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup or 95g uncooked quick rolled oats
3/4 cup or 125g semi-sweet chocolate chips
Optional: 1/2 cup or 50g chopped pecans (I leave them out most of the time.)

Method
Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C and grease a cookie sheet.

Cream your butter with the two sugars.

Add in the egg, vanilla and milk. As you can see, I've doubled the recipe.

Add in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and beat until smooth.

Add in the oats and chocolate chips and beat until well mixed.

Drop 2 inches apart on well-greased cookie sheet.

Bake 8-10 minutes, or until light brown. For chewy cookies, do not over bake!

Yeah, I put them too close. Doesn't affect the taste though.

A single batch will make about three dozen two-inch cookies per the ingredients list at the top. I highly recommend making a double batch of dough and freezing the balance as outlined below.

Freezing and baking instructions
On a big sheet of cling film, spoon out your leftover cookie dough along the width of the film.

Fold it over and press the dough into a sausage shape.

Fold in the sides of the cling film and roll the sausage up to completely cover the dough.

Place on cutting board or baking pan and put into the freezer until firm. This keeps for a couple of months.

When you are ready to bake again, preheat the oven and cut off as many slices of dough as you want to bake.

Place them on a greased cookie sheet. By the time the oven is up to temperature, the dough slices will be thawed.

Once they soften, you can pat them round again, if you want. The shape does not affect the taste though. :)

Bake as per initial instructions. Now you can have fresh baked cookies anytime! And the best part is that you know exactly what has gone into these, unlike the store-bought dough.

Enjoy!

 Also, if you are looking for inspiration for this month’s theme, check out what all of the hosting bloggers have made so far:

• Pecan Chocolate Bars from The Spiced Life
• Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies from Food Lust People Love
• White Chocolate Oat Cookies from Magnolia Days
• Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Cookies from It’s Yummi
• Fortune Cookies from A Baker’s House
• Whole Wheat Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies from Karen’s Kitchen Stories
• Chocolate Chip Skillet Brownies from At Home with Rebecka
• Orange Cookies from Basic N Delicious
• Melting Moments from All That’s Left Are The Crumbs
• Pumpkin Oatmeal Pecan Cookies from If I Ever Owned A Bakery…
• Peanut Butter No-Bakes from Cookie Dough and Oven Mitt
• Banana Apple (Banapple) Spiced Cookies from LivLifeToo

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Eli's Sweet and Sour Chicken for #RandomRecipeChallenge

Easy, sweet and sour chicken, the Indonesian way, from the recipe book of one of my dearest friends. This is MJ and Jim approved!

Many years ago, and I mean MANY years ago, we lived in Balikpapan, Indonesia.  You may have heard me mention it before, at least once or twice.  I was blessed in that location by several good friends who made a tiny oilfield town with hardly anything to recommend it (We are talking 1989, folks.) one of our very favorite places to live.  I am thrilled beyond words that one of them is living in Dubai and we get together quite often.  It’s like we’ve never been apart.

When I read the instructions for this month’s Random Recipe Challenge where we are supposed to borrow a cookbook from someone else and make a random dish from it, I decided to ask MJ for her help.  She not only lent me her personal cookbook of handwritten recipes, but she chose the recipe for me.  It’s a dish she learned from her sweet maid while she lived in Balikpapan.

Eli made it by heart and, as you see by the evidentiary photos, there are no amounts and hardly any instructions, so MJ told me what to do and I did my best.  The amounts, I came up with on my own.  I don't think a recipe can get more random than that!

But I think I did all right because I brought a serving over to her house the next day for a critique and she and her husband both declared it delicious and well done!   I hope you enjoy it as much as we all did.

Ingredients
1 lb 6 oz or 625g boneless chicken breasts (more or less)
1 teaspoon sea salt
Black pepper
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic
2-inch piece fresh ginger
1 tablespoon butter
1 small red bell pepper
1 small green bell pepper
1 hot red chili pepper
5 oz or 140g pineapple (fresh or canned in juice, not syrup - about 4 slices, drained)
3/4 cup or 180ml ketchup – any brand
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 cup or 65g flour
Olive oil for pan frying

Method
Cut your chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces.  Season with the salt and a good couple of grinds of fresh black pepper.  Stir well and set aside.

Mince your garlic and ginger.  Cut the onion in half and then cut it into thick slices.

Chop your green and red bell peppers into bite-sized pieces.  Cut the pineapple into small chunks. Mince the red chili pepper.

Sauté the onion with the butter and a little drizzle of olive oil.

When the onion has browned slightly but is still crunchy, add in the garlic and ginger.  Sauté until they are all golden but be careful not to burn the garlic.

Remove the garlic, onion and ginger from the pan and set aside in a small bowl.

Heat the pan until quite hot and stir-fry the bellpeppers for just a few minutes, until they get some little charred bits on them.  Remove from the pan and set aside.

For the sauce, put the ketchup, chili, vinegar and the sugar in a small pot with about 1/4 cup or 60ml water.

Give it a good stir and then add in the pineapple pieces and the onion, ginger and garlic.

Simmer for about 15-20 minutes.  The recipe calls for some cornstarch to thicken it but MJ says she has never used it and I didn’t find it necessary either.

Add the flour to the chicken bowl and stir with a fork, gently prying the pieces of chicken apart with the tines to make sure that the flour has coated all sides of all the pieces.

Add a little olive oil to the pan and fry the coated chicken in two or three sets, keeping the chicken pieces in a single layer and removing them to a paper towel-lined plate with they are cooked through and are well browned on both sides.

Right before you are ready to serve, toss the peppers back into the pan with the chicken and warm through.

You can add the sauce and stir to coat.  Or simply pile your chicken and peppers on the white rice and top with the sauce to serve.

Either way, enjoy!

If you would like to join dapper Dom at Belleau Kitchen for this or future challenges, head on over to his website or his Facebook page and say howdy!

Challenge #24 - Another Country