Cooking with Addie posts will come up periodically and are designed for older kids or teens learning to cook. Not a kid? Make this anyway!!

It wasn’t too awfully hot this morning, so I was willing to turn on the oven to make some muffins I’ve been dreaming about for quite a while. Addie, my young fellow cook and blog-reader, is quite a baker according to her mom and also from the photos I’ve seen. It seemed a good thing for the next “COOKING WITH ADDIE” (a short series of older kids’ cooking posts this summer) to be something scrumptious for the oven. Whether you’re a kid or a kid at heart, I think you might enjoy some seasonal summer muffins this year.  (Dessert is still coming up in the last post of the series; don’t despair!)

Everyone makes blueberry muffins, though, and I’m no exception. I wanted something different this time.

               Blueberry-Lemon 158 calorie muffins–my latest muffins

So when the sweet cherries arrived in the stores, I kept wondering about cherry muffins. I’d never heard of cherry muffins; they surely have been made somewhere, right?  My cooking experience leads me to know there’s little new under the sun.

And then the early peaches showed their sweet faces.  (No Colorado peaches yet, but they’re coming!)

That was it; I would make Cherry-Peach muffins.  I’d add a little cinnamon, some ginger and would end up throwing in nutmeg and nuts for spicy, crunchy good measure. Hopefully Addie–and a few more of you– will make some, too.  If you’ve no time now, freeze some chopped cherries while they’re in the stores and and make these when the Colorado peaches arrive.  (Use a cherry pitter to pit your cherries or remove the pits using a small paring knife.) Try this:

CHERRY-PEACH MUFFINS WITH SPICES AND NUTS

makes 12 muffins

If you have no peaches, use all cherries–or visa-versa. The muffins will be lovely whichever way you make them.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup canola oil or melted, cooled butter
• 2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon each cinnamon and ginger
• several grinds of fresh nutmeg (or a tiny pinch of ground nutmeg), OPTIONAL
• 1/2 cup finely chopped and peeled peaches
• 1/2 cup finely chopped pitted and stemmed sweet cherries
• 1/2 cup chopped walnut or almonds (I used a mixture)

DIRECTIONS:

In a small bowl or mixing cup, whisk together the wet ingredients: milk, egg, and oil or butter. Set aside.  In a medium bowl or large mixing up, mix together the dry ingredients:  flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and spices.  Pour the wet ingredients on top of the dry ingredients and mix until just blended.  Add fruit and nuts; stir until just combined.  Divide between well-greased muffin cups or paper-lined muffin cups, filling each cup about 2/3 full.* (I use a greased ice cream scoop.) Bake 15-20 minutes or until just done and golden brown. Don’t over-bake these. A toothpick should come out clean when inserted into the center of done muffins, but they may be done just a minute before that. Turn out onto cooling rack and cool at least 5 minutes before eating. Enjoy!

Storage:  In Colorado, baked goods are best eaten pretty soon after they’re made due to our lack of humidity. If you need to store them, place totally cooled muffins in a well-sealed storage container for a day or two only. They’ll freeze fine, too. Take them out and let them unthaw several hours in the closed container.

*Cook’s Note:  I like muffins baked right in greased muffin tins as there is a beautiful golden brown crunch on the exterior of the muffin that provides an important difference in texture and taste between the outside and the inside. Paper liners work fine, but steam the muffin inside the paper rather than bake it up crispy right in the metal.

{printable recipe for cherry-peach muffins}

IF YOU LIKED THIS, ADDIE AND OTHER BAKERS, YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE MY:

Strawberry-Blueberry Almond Muffins

OTHER INFO YOU MIGHT ENJOY:

BAKING TIPS FOR MUFFINS

BASIC BAKING TIPS FROM REAL SIMPLE  INCLUDING HOW TO MEASURE

20 BEST MUFFIN RECIPES

YOU TUBE JOY OF BAKING — MUFFINS

THE BEST BRITISH BAKING SHOW WEBSITE

~~~~~~~~~~~

Bake on and let me know how they turned out!

Alyce