A Productive Saturday - Muffins & Pie Cookies

I've been looking up and printing many recipes lately, but I haven't actually had a chance to try them all! Turns out, it takes less time and effort to research them than it is to see them through...hrm...

As it turns out, I finally had a whole Saturday yesterday where I didn't have to work nor did I have any prior obligations. So what did that mean for me? A trip to Costco and Bed Bath & Beyond and some quality time in the kitchen!

A new mini muffin tin later, it was time to get this baking-fest started! First, I started with cappuccino muffins - I was drawn to the recipe because I happened to have all the ingredients and the topping showed promise for a delicious top of the muffin to give it some texture and help keep it from tasting too dry (I have been having this issue with muffins). 

Dry ingredients

Mixing in the chocolate chips

Crumble topping

All ready to go into the oven!

Overflow batter made it into regular sized muffin tins

Le petite muffins!

Next, I tried this apple w/ oatmeal topping recipe. I was really trying to do things right this time, so I was careful to measure everything out, and the only things I substituted were flour (I always used half white and half wheat), butter (half butter and half applesauce), and for the apple muffin recipe that called for 3 eggs, I substituted one for ground flax seed (who knew!).

Regular eggs pre-flax seed

Flax seed egg substitute

Whisking the Eggs w/ Flax Seed sub

Apples chopped & ready to go

Walnuts chopped & ready to go

Mixing the toppings

Batter ready for the mix-ins

Apple chunks mixed into batter

Toppings on and ready to go!

Sneak peek in the oven...I couldn't wait to see how they were doing...

Overflowing muffins are the best type of muffins =)

Overflow of batter ended up in regular muffin tins

And finally, last but not least, a recipe that I've been dying to try for months now, apple pie cookies from smitten kitchen! I made the dough for the crust after the first two muffins, and then took a break to cut up some watermelon (I needed space in the fridge) and get some quality time on a kayak - trying to take in the last few days of summer (it's been going by so quickly!). Then resumed assembly of the cookies when I got back. 

Clearing out space in the fridge, aka, cutting up watermelon

Prepping for the Apple Pie Cookies

Sliced & Diced

Cutting in the butter (can't find my food processor, so had to do it by hand)

Liking the green and yellow =)

For coating the apples

pre-seasoned apples (recipe calls to coat them one at a time...but that definitely didn't happen)

The rather laborious job of stamping out pie crusts - the larger

Before & After Baking

I am obviously biased toward the apple pie cookies...they got their own instagram compilation

Results: 

- The Cappuccino muffins were a little heavy for my taste. If I make them again, I will definitely be reducing the amount of sugar and need to figure out what else to do to make them lighter and more fluffy. Also will add more coffee flavor next time (can't really taste that much of it)

- Apple muffins - I loved! I think because there was a pretty even ratio of apple chunks to batter, kept it from being too dense. Plus the oatmeal/sugar topping gave it a nice texture.

- Apple Mini Pies - so worth the wait! I struggled a bit with the assembly, and I wonder if the whole wheat flour made it softer and less easy to work with? The dough didn't seem to be chilled enough though it had been sitting in the fridge for almost 2 hours (usually recipes call only for 1). I also didn't cut the apple pieces the same way that she called for, so I had to work around jagged edges instead of apple discs. Even for the dough I had to use makeshift cookie cutters! One ended up being tupperware...

Summary of the day

All in a day's work