Should it seem I don't cook anymore....?

Well, that is far from the truth, in the last two weeks I have made soups and pastas. All that of course in my desire to procrastinate or get off my butt from writing a 14 page paper (the biggie in my college career). They were all comfort foods to the max, unfortunately with the oncoming last weeks of any quarter or semester most students find themselves in the position of wanting junk food or comfort food, I am no exception. Between the comfort food needs came the run to the store for junk food. I tried out a few Giada de Laurentiis pasta recipes (one was excellent, the other so-so) and made my original onion potato soup. I also made an excellent Nigella Lawson dip recipe (which i will post about some other day), but instead I will blogging about what I did this weekend, which with the coming months will probabley been impossible, I baked! The recipe came from Gourmet and I must say is one of the easiest muffin recipes I have tried in long time, best part it had lots of berries. Although, I'm reducing the suger in this. So I present:

Cinnamon Blueberry Muffins

6 TBS unsalted butter (melted and cooled)

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar (original called for 1 cup)

1/2 cup whole milk (room tempture if you have the time)

1 large egg (room tempture if you have the time)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen, don't need to thaw)

Need: muffin tin with 12 muffin cups (1/2 cup each, a regular muffin tin) and muffin liners.

Oven: Preheat at 400 f.

1. Whisk together milk, butter, sugar, and egg (the mixture will be lumpy, but as Nigella Lawson says the best muffins come from lumpy batters).

2. Stir together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt. Add the wet mixture until ingredients are just combined. Fold in blueberries gently.

3. Divide equally into muffin tray and bake for 25 to 30 minutes (I suggest you check at 2o minutes), check with toothpick. No goo on toothpick they're are done.

4. Let cool for a little while and enjoy (the give the kitchen a heavenly scent and are so much better then anything you will get at your local coffee shop). Did I mention super easy?

The Great Experiment

This was inspired from Curiosity Killed The Cook's cooking a recipe from every country, instead though I am everyday going to try and celebrate the national food holiday (in finding these holidays out I believe every single month has a chocolate day). I began this experiment last Saturday with milk chocolate with almonds day, didn't get to do Sunday's Sugar Cookie celebration, very much felt the effects of Monday's Pina Colada day (by the way shout to Liz for providing the Pina Colada's and the many maraschino cherries that went into it), and yesterday cooked up a dozen Blueberry, Raspberry, and Blackberry muffins in honor of Blueberry Muffin day:

Berrific Muffins
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup fresh or frozen berries , rinsed and drained

Preheat oven to 4oo
Grease muffin pan (regular size, recipe makes a dozen)
1. Sift first four ingredients into a bowl and mix together
2. next in seperate bowl combine egg, milk, and vanilla
3. next combine wet and dry ingredients until just blended
4. add the oil and stir until just blended
5. fold berries in and spoon batter into muffin cups, Bake for 20-25 minutes.