{"id":394,"date":"2008-09-06T09:16:09","date_gmt":"2008-09-06T09:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.feedyourkids.com\/blog\/?p=394"},"modified":"2008-09-06T09:16:09","modified_gmt":"2008-09-06T09:16:09","slug":"blueberry-lemon-almond-muffins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.feedyourkids.com\/blog\/?p=394","title":{"rendered":"Blueberry Lemon (Almond) Muffins"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_5803.jpg\"<\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t remember how I originally stumbled across this website and this recipe<\/a>, but I printed it out a million years ago and have had it filed in my “try soon” recipe folder. (Yes, I’m a hoarder, but I’m obsessively organized and can usually put my hands on the EXACT piece of paper that I’m looking for in a minute flat…it’s a disorder, I know, but I usually use it to my advantage…) I happened to have all of the necessary ingredients on hand this morning, so decided to give these a try.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5798.jpg\"<\/span><\/p>\n

This recipe calls for Penzey’s Baking Spice<\/a>, which I thought would be easy to concoct on my own. I mean, why bother with buying some blend of cinnamon, mace, cardamom and anise, when I already have those things in my spice cabinet? I can figure out how much to mix in, right? The problem was, as I soon discovered, that I only had anise seeds<\/em> in my spice cabinet, not ground<\/em> anise, which I thought would be better for sprinkling into baked goods. Undaunted, I just figured I’d get some the next time I went to the store. I tried my regular grocery store<\/a>. No luck (it’s a smallish store, in the suburbs and not terribly specialized, so I wasn’t shocked). So, I decided to try the health food store<\/a> and the local gourmet foods store<\/a>. Still no luck. OK, I was starting to think that was really weird. They finally opened a new gigantic foods store in my neighborhood (for my East Coast buddies, the new store is VERY much like a Wegman’s: you can buy your upscale olives, imported cheeses…they have an in-store sushi bar, even….but you can also buy Tide and 7-Up, unlike at the health food or gourmet store) and so I decided to try there. Still no luck.<\/p>\n

Well, when we passed through Houston recently, one of the places that I wanted to go was to the Penzey’s Spices store. They have great prices on bulk spices and they have some delicious-sounding proprietary spice blends (about 4 different kinds of curry powders alone) that I was nervous about buying from the catalog (I wanted to be able to smell, etc.). Well, wouldn’t you know it…they had ground anise, so I ended up getting some there. I should have just ordered the Baking Spice from them in the first place.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5800.jpg\"<\/span>
\n10 packets (one packet was plenty for all of the muffins) for about 50 cents…<\/p>\n

I found the vanilla sugar recently on a field trip to the Hong Kong Supermarket<\/a>, which is odd because the sugar is from Germany. I think it’s made with artificial vanilla flavoring, but it’s still good. If you want to make your own, just chop a vanilla bean into 1\/2 inch segments and place it in a sealed, plastic container with 2 cups of coarse sugar and let it sit for a few weeks, giving it a shake to blend every couple of days, or whenever you think about it.<\/p>\n

These muffins were absolutely delicious. The polenta gave them a delicious crunch; the buttermilk made them very rich and moist and the batter was thick enough that the blueberries didn’t all sink to the bottom of the muffins (I hate<\/em> that).<\/p>\n

If you’re not as afflicted with OCD<\/strike> single-minded and determined as I am, feel free to substitute Chai Spice blend<\/a> or Cinnamon Spice blend <\/a>or just a couple of shakes of cinnamon to this recipe, instead.<\/p>\n

Or just leave it out altogether.<\/p>\n

That wouldn’t bother me at all<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Really<\/strong>. Not a bit<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Well………maybe just a little<\/em> bit.<\/p>\n

Well, how ’bout if you don’t use the Baking Spice, you just don’t tell me about it, OK?<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5804.jpg\"<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t remember how I originally stumbled across this website and this recipe, but I printed it out a million years ago and have had it filed in my “try soon” recipe folder. (Yes, I’m a hoarder, but I’m obsessively organized and can usually put my hands on the EXACT piece of paper that I’m … Continue reading “Blueberry Lemon (Almond) Muffins”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breads","category-breakfast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.feedyourkids.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.feedyourkids.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.feedyourkids.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.feedyourkids.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.feedyourkids.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.feedyourkids.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.feedyourkids.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.feedyourkids.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.feedyourkids.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}