Cranberry Almond Applesauce Muffins #MuffinMonday

These cranberry almond applesauce muffins are tender and sweet, but not too sweet! They are perfect for snack time or breakfast with the addition of rolled oats.

A couple of weeks ago, I made homemade applesauce because one of lovely ladies who help us care for Mom suggested that applesauce would be handy to help her swallow her pills. It is really is! 

The only problem is that I made so much applesauce (four apples worth) and Mom only eats a little spoonful a day so I was concerned that it would turn bad before we used it up. 

Enter these applesauce muffins! They use 2/3 cup or 173g of applesauce and are absolutely delicious. 

Cranberry Almond Applesauce Muffins

This recipe make a small batch of six regular size muffins. If you have homemade applesauce, by all means, use it but store-bought works fine as well. Just try to buy one without a lot of added sugar. These muffins don’t need it. 

Ingredients

1 cup or 125g flour

1/4 cup or 25g rolled oats

1/4 cup or 50g brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

Pinch salt

1 large egg

2/3 cup or 173g applesauce

1/4 cup or 60ml canola or other light oil, plus extra for greasing the muffin pan

1/2 cup or 45g dried cranberries

1/4 cup or 30g sliced toasted almonds

Optional for topping: more dried cranberries and almonds

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and grease a six-cup muffin pan. 

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

In a large bowl, whisk together the egg, applesauce and oil.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and fold until they are just mixed. 

Add the cranberries and almonds and fold again. 

Divide the batter between the six muffin cups. Top with a few cranberries and sliced almonds, if desired. 

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. 

Cool on a wire rack. 

Enjoy! 

It's the last Monday of the month so that means it's time for my Muffin Monday friends to share their recipes. Check out the links below: 

• Cinnamon Roll Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Cranberry Almond Applesauce Muffins from Food Lust People Love
• Lemon Filled Gingerbread Muffins from Jolene's Recipe Journal
• Pumpkin Orange and Date Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Sourdough Eggnog Muffins from Zesty South Indian Kitchen

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all of our 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.

Pin these Cranberry Almond Applesauce Muffins!

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Country Applesauce Pecan Muffins #MuffinMonday

Made with thick homemade applesauce, these country applesauce pecan muffins are rich with the flavors of brown sugar and cinnamon. They are a great breakfast muffin or afternoon snack.

Weekend before last, ahead of a routine test on Monday, my husband was instructed to start on a soft food diet. We headed to our big hypermarket for a shopping trip, picking up clear soups and other tasty morsels he could eat. “How about applesauce?” he said. “Sure,’ I replied. I turned back towards the fresh produce, as he turned toward the cans and jars. We both stopped.

“We are not going to buy applesauce!” I exclaimed. “You know how easy it is to make applesauce!” Plus, I pointed out, we were having pork chops for dinner – his last solid meal for a couple of days - so we’d need applesauce for those as well.

Sure, it takes a while to peel and core the apples (and toss them in a little fresh lemon juice), but you know exactly what you get when you are done. Pure applesauce, with a hint of lemon. If you choose your apples wisely, you don’t need to add sugar.

How to make applesauce:
Put the juice of one small lemon in a large mixing bowl. Peel, core and chop 3 Granny Smith apples and four Red Delicious, tossing the chunks in the lemon juice to stop them turning brown.

Place the lot in a heavy saucepan with 1/4 cup or 60ml water. Keep the fire on medium low and cover the pot with a tightfitting lid. Check it often, stirring the apples when you do. Cook until the apples are very soft and can be mashed easily with the back of a spoon. Taste the applesauce and add a little sugar, if necessary. Store in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.

Country Applesauce Pecan Muffins

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup or 125g pecans
2/3 cup or 132g brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoons salt
1/3 cup or 80ml canola oil, plus a little extra for greasing muffin pan
1 large egg
1 rounded cup or 250g applesauce (see instructions above or use store-bought sauce)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180C°. Toast the pecans on a dry baking pan as the oven preheats. Watch them closely and shake the pan occasionally so the pecans don’t scorch.  This won’t take long. Remove from the oven and chop coarsely.

Grease 12 standard muffin cups with a little canola or line the pan with paper liners.

Divide the chopped pecans, setting aside a generous handful to sprinkle on the muffins before baking.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, the larger pile of chopped pecans, brown sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

In another smaller mixing bowl, thoroughly whisk the oil, egg, applesauce and vanilla extract together.

Fold the wet ingredients into the dry until just mixed.

Divide the batter between the 12 muffin cups. Top with the reserved chopped pecans.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to Karen from Karen’s Kitchen Stories for hosting this edition of Muffin Monday while I am on the road from the east coast to the west with my daughter. We are in New York state right now and are headed to Cleveland, Ohio this morning. As I mentioned in my last post, my Instagram feed is always kind of a weird mix of images, but for the next eight days, it's going to be filled with sights from our cross country trip. Do follow along!

Meanwhile, make sure to check out all the other goodies my Muffin Monday friends are sharing today!

• Banana Cookie Butter Oatmeal Muffins from Farm Fresh Feasts
• Blueberry-Peach Muffins from Palatable Pastime
• Cherry Surprise Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Corned Beef Stuffed Muffins from Passion Kneaded
• Country Applesauce Pecan Muffins from Food Lust People Love
• Sour Cream Muffins with Mixed Berries from Karen's Kitchen Stories

#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.

Pin it! 

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Browned Butter Applesauce Bars with Apple Walnut Streusel

This cakey bar is made with browned butter, walnuts and applesauce, then topped with apple walnut browned butter streusel. Browned Butter Applesauce Bars are the perfect fall snack!

Baking with apples cries out for brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg and fills your home with a heady aroma of autumn.   These bars turned out to be more cake than cookie so think of them as the blondie for apple eaters.  Take a big bite of fall right here!

Many years ago, when I was still a student at the University of Texas, I had an internship with the Texas Tourism Bureau.  One of my responsibilities was writing press releases about the wonders of our great state.  Information would cross my desk and I would turn it into something interesting that the wire services would, if it caught their fancy, pick up send out to newspapers to reprint.

Now this was back in the dark ages before internet so going viral meant being picked up by either AP (Associated Press) and UPI (United Press International.) I had one story that was picked up by both.

My deliberately provocative headline read: “New England Ain’t Got Nothing on Us” and it was all about the beautiful fall foliage in East Texas’s Piney Woods. Somewhere in my portfolio, I have clipped copies of the article and the furor that ensued as all of New England and other east coast states reprinted and expressed their outrage that Texas could even START to compare. Even a few west coast papers chimed in. It was great fun and my boss and I were high-fiving all over the office! Not bad for just an intern.

For naysayers and skeptics, I’m going to send you right over to TourTexas.com. See!

When I am in the US, I wouldn’t dream of sitting outside when temperatures are still in the nineties (Fahrenheit) or the mid-thirties (Celsius) but here in Dubai, after the scorching summer, this does actually feel cool.  Relatively speaking.  So I sit outside with my newspaper and a cup of coffee first thing in the morning and as I watch pendulous yellow and red dates ripen into sticky, sweet dark brown on my palm trees, I dream of the vibrantly colored leaves in colder climes. And I bake with apples.

And one morning recently we were thrilled to get a visit from a parrot. 

Browned Butter Applesauce Bars with Apple Walnut Streusel 

Ingredients
For the base:
2 cups or 250g flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup or 115g browned butter – follow Kayle’s instructions here and make enough for the streusel as well.
1/3 cup or 75g sugar
1/4 cup, firmly packed, or 50g brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups applesauce
1 cup or 100g chopped walnuts

For the streusel:
1 cup or 100g chopped walnuts
1 medium Granny Smith apple (about 7 oz or 200g before coring and chopping)
1/4 cup, firmly packed, or 50g brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup or 57g browned butter– follow Kayle’s instructions here and make enough for the base as well.
1/4 teaspoon salt

For drizzled glaze – optional
1/2 cup or 60g icing sugar
3-4 teaspoons milk

Method
Step one is browning your butter.  Follow the link here for full instructions and make sure you brown enough for the base AND the streusel.  Sorry to keep repeating but I don't want you to brown half a cup and then realize!

Put the browned butter for the streusel in a medium-sized bowl.  Peel and core your apple and cut it into small pieces.

Add them to the browned butter in the streusel bowl and mix well.  This will stop your apple from browning.

Add in the rest of the streusel ingredients and stir well.  Set aside.

Now we are ready to make the base.  Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare a large baking pan (about 10x16in or 24x40cm) by greasing it with butter or non-stick spray.  I like to line mine first with foil, because, since I can lift it out when cool, cutting is easier.

Mix your flour, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg in a bowl and set aside.

In yet another mixing bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer, beat together the browned butter and sugars for the base.

Add in the eggs and the vanilla and beat well.

Add in the flour mixture and beat again briefly.

Using a spatula, fold in the applesauce and then the chopped walnuts.

Pour into your prepared baking pan smooth out the top with a spatula.  Make sure the batter is even all the way to the corners.

Sprinkle on the streusel topping and bake in the preheated for 25-30 minutes or until the edges pull away from the sides a little and the whole thing is a delicious golden color.

Meanwhile, measure the powdered sugar for the glaze into a small bowl and add milk one teaspoon at a time, stirring well, until the glaze is of drizzling consistency.

Remove the applesauce bars from the oven and allow to cool completely before drizzling on the glaze.  I prefer to use a piping bag for more even drizzling but you can do it with the spoon or fork.  Whatever works for you.

Just keep drizzling till it's all used up.  You can't have too much glaze. 

Now cut that applesauce bar goodness into squares.  I got 48 2in or 5cm squares.

Enjoy!

Join our hosts Laura from The Spiced Life and Rebecka from At Home with Rebecka and my other fellow Creative Cookie Exchange bakers by baking and sharing your favorite apple cookie or bar!  It’s the best way to celebrate autumn!

To join in the fun, just complete the steps below:
1. Write a blog post with cookie recipe and original photo using apples.  We would like the recipe to be one you’re making for the first time, and photos must be original.
2. Post the Creative Cookie Exchange badge somewhere on your blog so others can join in the fun.

3. Make a good faith effort to visit and comment on the other cookies in the Linky party. We all love cookies so that should be easy!
4. LIKE the Creative Cookie Exchange Facebook Page
5. FOLLOW the Creative Cookie Exchange Pinterest Board
6. LINK your blog post below using the Linky tool

You can also just use us as a great resource for cookie recipes.  Be sure to check out our Facebook page, our Pinterest Board, and our monthly posts. You will be able to find them the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month! Also, if you are looking for inspiration for this month's theme, check out what all of the hosting bloggers have made:

• Almond Apple Cider Snickerdoodles from If I Ever Owned A Bakery...
• Apple Butterscotch Cookies from Noshing With The Nolands
• Apple Walnut Cream Cheese Cookies from Magnolia Days
• Brandy Apple Bars from KarenTrina Childress
• Browned Butter Applesauce Bars from Food Lust People Love
• Caramel-Stuffed Apple Cider Spice Cookies from All That's Left Are The Crumbs
• Fuji Apple Cookies from NinjaBaking.com
• Ginger Sandwich Cookies with Apple Butter Cream Filling from A Baker's House
• Iced Apple Drop Cookies from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Salted Caramel Apple Popcorn Cookies from It's Yummi!
• Streusel Topped Apple Oatmeal Bars from The Spiced Life
• Butterscotch Apple Pie Cookies from At Home with Rebecka 
• Cider Snaps from Cookie Dough and Oven Mitt