Sunday, August 30, 2009

SMS: Fresh Peach (and Almond) Muffins


This week’s Sweet Melissa Sunday treat was Fresh Peach Muffins. Since it’s nice to have hot, fluffy muffins fresh out of the oven, I had actually intended making these at the very last minute (Sunday morning), because I was going to run a 10k race on Saturday morning. However, yesterday was one of the hottest days we’ve had all summer and we decided not to run the race. Instead I decided to turn on the oven and bake peach muffins. The original recipe calls for ½ teaspoon of cinnamon and 1 ½ teaspoons orange zest. I like cinnamon, but feel like I bake with it quite often (and with fall upon us, probably lots more in the near future), so I decided to vary the flavor combination a bit. For my half batch, I used a scant ½ teaspoon of nutmeg, ¾ tablespoon almond extract, and subbed in Meyer lemon zest for orange zest. I also added a handful of sliced almonds to give the muffins some extra texture. The recipe said to cut the milk for peach muffins, but my peaches were not very juicy and my batter seemed very thick, so I added a couple tablespoons at the last minute.



The muffins ended up turning out very good (I didn’t seem to have the denseness problem a lot of the other bakers experienced), though not terribly peachy. I look forward to trying the rest of the sweet muffin flavors in the Sweet Melissa Baking Book – and possibly trying some of my own combinations as well. I gave this recipe a 7.8 for Deliciousness and a 2 for Effort, giving it an EDR of 3.9. Many thanks to JoVonn of the Givens Chronicles for representing the peach state and selecting this great breakfast treat. You can find the recipe HERE on JoVonn’s site (plus lots of other good recipes) and see what the other bakers thought via the SMS blogroll. And if you would like to enter my giveaway, scroll on down a couple posts; the winner will be selected and posted tomorrow evening.

10 comments:

k.a.r.e.n said...

Nice additions! Love the almonds. Your muffins look great!

Mrs. G said...

Your substitutions sound great. Thank you for baking with me!

Nina said...

The almonds sound delicious as an addition.

JoAnn Freda said...

Great looking muffin tops! They look crunchy, chewy and sugary - just the way they should be.

Cristine said...

Your muffins look gorgeous!

Sarah said...

Your muffins are beautiful - I love that last shot of them. Almond and meyer lemon zest sound heavenly!

Flourchild said...

If I had my choice of running or baking sweets..I would choose the baking! Im glad you did..sorry it was so hot outside. I love the topping on your muffins...nice idea to put the almonds on!

Jeannette said...

beautiful muffins!! the almonds sound like a really nice boost in texture, i'll have to try that!

Hanaâ said...

Ooooooh your muffins look nice!! Thanks for including a picture of the inside. The texture looks very nice. Great idea on adding almonds (I think they go really well with peaches - to no surprise as they are in the same botanic family).

I can email you the Tres Leches Cake recipe, if you'd like. Just email me at HanaasKitchen [at] live [dot] com.

Unknown said...

Great changes to the recipe! I wish I'd used some common sense and just added a bit more liquid at the end when the batter looked so thick-I probably wouldn't have ended up with such dense muffins.