But today's find was just too good to wait on. I pinned this recipe some time ago on my Pinterest board for Snickerdoodle Muffins. Sounded pretty good and I've had a HANKERIN' lately for Snickerdoodle cookies, so when Henry woke up this morning and said, "Can we please make some muffins? I like baking." I had to give him a huge hug and kiss and prepare the kitchen for muffin-making.
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| My kiddos LOVE stirring! |
I'm not going to re-type the whole recipe here, but what I changed was that I made these muffins CRANBERRY SNICKERDOODLE MUFFINS! Are you gasping right now? I was when I thought of it. And after reading the original blogger's notes about how she liked but didn't LOVE these muffins, me thinks I'm going to have to share my modification with her. Because these muffins ROCKED THE HOUSE today. Both boys were chomping and smacking and licking their fingers and I ate three. One for me, one for the baby and one for a bonus in case I got hungry later. ;)
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| Is there anything more gorgeous than cranberries? |
So, follow the recipe exactly as Ashley has hers typed up at eat me, delicious. Except I couldn't find in her instructions where she used the nutmeg she called for, so I threw it in with the flour mixture in step 2. Then at the very end of step 3 after the batter was completely mixed, I folded in a heaping cup of coarsely chopped fresh (mine were actually frozen, but thawed by the time I mixed them into the batter...) cranberries.
Henry mostly handled step 4 for me, and we found that tho this batter is a much wetter and stickier batter than you would expect to be dropping into a bowl of sugar and cinnamon and rolling it around, it works. Drop your ice-cream-scoop's worth of dough in the bowl of sugar/cinnamon and then use your fingers to scoop the sugar/cinnamon mixture onto the top and sides of the dough until it's coated enough that you can grab it with your fingers and kinda flop it over. Repeat the dusting and then scoop it up once again and drop into your muffin tins. I also squirted a spray of Pam into each of my muffin tins even tho the original recipe didn't call for it.
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| Unbaked dough in the muffin tins. You'll have sticky fingers after this part, but it's more do-able than it seems at first. |
My muffins came out pretty easily after they'd cooled a while. The first 4 (or 5 or 6) that we had to eat IMMEDIATELY were a bit sticky and fall-aparty as we pulled them out, but they were much firmer after cooling 15 minutes or so. It's possible that the addition of the cranberries might require an extra 1/4 cup of flour, and I think I'll do that next time.
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| After they came out of the oven. My food photography is awful, but the muffins are FANTASTIC! One extra note, you can fill your muffin tins pretty full, I didn't find a lot of rise in these muffins and the ones that had the fullest cups baked up with domed tops and looked the prettiest. |
These would be a terrific item to have sitting on a platter Thanksgiving morning (make the day before...) for people to snacky on while you're busy cooking the big dinner. Or a Christmas morning breakfast with some kind of scrambled egg casserole or something? Anywhoosie, go make 'em. I doubt you'll be disappointed.
