Applesauce spice muffins

 

Happy New Year! I always like to welcome in the new year with something baked for breakfast, sort of setting the tone for the coming year by starting with the way I wish I could live every day. I always try at least one new recipe on New Year's Day, so if I start at breakfast, I know I'm covered.

Plus, this recipe ties in with one of my many New Year's resolutions (guess how many relate to food?). I want to do a better job using up ingredients from the many pockets around my house -- the refrigerator, the freezer, and scattered canned goods and baking supplies. For one thing, I loathe food waste, and for another, I have the vain hope that if I winnowed down my supplies to a more manageable level, I'm more likely to use things up if I can store things in an organized manner so I remember they exist.

This recipe lets me use up party leftovers, in this case the apples from the sparkling apple sangria I made recently. I transferred the apple slices from the pitcher to the food processor and pureed them, leaving me with a nice applesauce in search of use.

Applesauce spice muffins

From epicurious.com (Gourmet, November 2003)

Ingredients

Muffins

1½ cups flour

1½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon allspice

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 cup packed light brown sugar

½ cup (1 stick) plus 3 tablespoons melted butter

1 cup unsweetened applesauce

1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts

Topping

2 tablespoons sugar

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon allspice

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease or line a muffin tin with 12 paper liners. Combine all topping ingredients and set aside.

Stir together flour, baking powder, soda, spices and salt. In a separate large bowl, whisk together eggs and brown sugar until well combined. Add butter and whisk until creamy. Stir in applesauce. Add flour and stir until just combined. Add nuts. Divide batter among the 12 muffin tins. (These will be much fuller than I’m used to filling muffin tins, but the batter isn’t the kind that puffs up massively, so it works out OK.)

Sprinkle with topping ingredients. (It works out to being more than ¼ teaspoon topping per muffin but less than ½ teaspoon.) Bake until golden, about 20 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes before removing muffins from pan.

Rating: Quite moist, nice texture, good flavor from all those spices. Since half of the applesauce I used was extra flavorful, I can’t vouch for how much of a role that played, but they’re definitely a worthwhile way to use up any extra applesauce that might otherwise go bad.