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I’m an egg lover and indulge in one or two in some fashion nearly every day. That said, there is simply nothing like fresh bread or pastries for breakfast. Am I right? Biscuits and honey with sour cream (try it), cinnamon rolls, banana bread, Danish, croissants, English muffins, scones, slices off a warm whole wheat loaf slathered with butter and jam, crumpets, and — of course — muffins. I rarely bake in summer but when a cool morning finally arrives, there’s little to stop me from mixing up some certain special something (Why not a muffin starring our famous Colorado peaches?!) and scarfing it down quite warm, right out of the pan. Well, truth told, it’s husband and best sous Dave who’s more the scarfer. The man can eat; thank you, thank you. I’ll have one muffin with my coffee and call it quits. While Dave…well, you get the picture.

Muffins, an easy quick bread (unlike the pastries above, insert rolling eyes), are done practically before you’ve washed the bowls and spatulas you used to make them. Scroll down for a link to my very best muffin tips because while they’re for sure easy, they’re not always easy to make well. In the meantime, check out the photos of the pretty as a peach muffins I decided to garnish with a spicy cardamom streusel:

Health Benefits of Cardamom/HEALTHLINE

What’s the most important thing about making muffins? I’d say it’s two-fold: not overmixing the batter (Stir just until completely mixed and no more.) and not overbaking the muffins. Over mixing will result in dense, tough muffins as the gluten will have become overdeveloped. Over baking will result in dry muffins. They’re done in about 15 minutes in my rather hot gas oven, though yours might take longer or shorter. Keep an eagle eye on them. You don’t have time to walk away and get something else done so you might as well drink your first cup of coffee hot when you try this:

Note: original weight for granulated sugar in the muffin recipe itself indicated 50 grams; I have corrected it to 100 grams for 1/2 cup on 8/13/25. My apologies.

Change it up: Be brave, my friends. The recipe police are on vacation. This muffin will bake with peaches, blueberries, cherries, raisins, or diced apples or a mixture. You can mix and match the spices in the streusel (cinnamon and cloves for the apple, for example) or leave the streusel off completely. Some bakers sprinkle the tops of muffins with a coarse sugar like Demerara instead of using a streusel. If you’ve no cardamom — or don’t care for the taste (it is rather pronounced and prominent, which is why it’s used sparingly) — you might skip it and add a little more ginger. Pecans will work as well as walnuts and I would have used them but I was out. (I got some at COSTCO today!) Chopped almonds or hazelnuts would be possibilities, too. There are streusels with butter and flour but I didn’t add one in the interest of calories and health, though it would add richness of flavor. King Arthur has a recipe that will work here if you’d like the heavier topping.

*For easy, quick morning muffins, do your prep the night before. Chop the fruit, mix with lemon juice, place in a small, resealable bag in the fridge. Grease the muffin pan, measure or weigh the dry ingredients into a large bowl or 8-cup measuring cup and leave covered on the counter or in the cold oven should you have inquisitive pets or critters. Mix the liquid ingredients, cover, and refrigerate. The next morning, preheat the oven while you make coffee, first taking out the liquids to warm up and the dry ingredients/pan if you’ve stored them in the oven! Stir muffin batter together, fill muffin cups, and bake. Enjoy!

Should you like to make these muffins over the winter, store a small bag of chopped peaches mixed with lemon in your freezer. Thaw overnight in the fridge for a morning bake. About February, they’ll be pure gold for you. (Sliced peaches, also with lemon to prevent oxidation, can be stored for winter pies.)

MUFFIN TIPS: I have posted my very best-of-the-house muffin tips twice on the blog and needn’t repeat that mess here. Would you like to read through? Here you go! (You’ll need to scroll down from the top on the post.)

PAPER LINERS: You might have heard this a time or two before; sorry, it bears repeating. I am not a fan of paper muffin cup liners despite their ease and despite their popularity. I think the paper keeps the muffin from browning, steals its flavor, is a bit wasteful, and feels something like coffee in a cardboard cup tastes to me. It’s just as easy to grease (I use a cooking spray or Crisco, others like softened butter) and bake, though you do have to scrub the pan a bit afterward. Let it soak for 15 minutes and clean it with a scrubby; you’ll be good. I’m very attached to my gold, nonstick (it’s not truly nonstick) Williams-Sonoma muffin pan– though they’re dear, I’ll give you that. I find equipment always a worthwhile investment. A pot or pan has often been my favorite Christmas gift. But, friends: If paper liners are the only way you’re baking, ok then. I’d rather have you bake!!

IF YOU LIKED THIS, YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE MY:

Peach Scones

Plum Crumble Tart

Blueberry-Peach Muffins with Ginger

Peaches and Sour Cream Corn Muffins

Yes, you can griddle a buttered, halved muffin (any, including corn muffins) and cook an egg in the middle. Right–what else would you do with a half-stale muffin and you needing your breakfast?! The goal is to never throw anything away. But, of course, you want things that taste good!!!

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LIFE GOES ON:

Best sous and husband Dave and I have lived in our house up on the mesa in Colorado Springs for 20 years come October. The other day, we had this eastern view and for the first time in memory, could see the houses on the next set of eastern bluffs. For 20 years, it simply looked blank as they are always in shadow. One never knows when the view will change in Colorado but it happens every other minute.

At the end of the month, we’ll ship off to northern Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and the Hawaiian Islands on board the ms Westerdam for nearly a month. If you’d like to follow along, I’ll send updates via facebook. We have booked this bucket list trip — or just the Hawaiian version several times, but have had to cancel it over and over re COVID or due to family illness and death. We hope to go this time! I’m just beginning to put clothes aside in my closet and am interested to see that our temperatures will vary from the 40’s (Fahrenheit) to nearly 90. As we’re on the water a good deal of the time where it’s often breezy, we’ll need jackets, hats, gloves, and waterproof sneakers–which I purchased last week and am trying to break in. For Hawaii, teeshirts and skirts for me and shorts for Dave, will be needed. While folks often think of a cruise as a place to dress up, that’s only a very small part of it. I’ve gotten to the place where I take a couple of dressy tops that can be rolled for packing and wear them with a decent pair of black slacks. The suitcase for a month won’t hold true dress clothing, though in years past we somehow did it. Every year, we find less and less people bring evening wear, exactly as folks dress more and more casually here at home- even to go out for dinner or to attend a wedding. I have mixed feelings about it but am grateful to know I can wear comfy shoes night and day. You?

So what’s the timing? We spend 13 days going from Seattle to Dutch Harbor, including several sea days or cruising a glacier. Vancouver is our first stop (we’re taking a local craft beer tour as we have visited here a time or two previously) and then we skip most of the southern AK cruise ports, as our first Alaskan port is at Sitka. In Anchorage, we’ll take the train to Denali and a bus back in one day! I’m very interested in our Aleutian Islands stops (bucket list for me) and we’ve been watching a television fishing series based in Dutch Harbor. Then there are 5 sea days crossing the Pacific to Hawaii and 5 days going around Hawaii, including two in Honolulu. 6 sea days sailing back east to Seattle and we’re done. Yes, that’s a lot of sea days. No worries. My iPad is loaded with a ton of books and we take card games for the quieter moments. We’ll keep an eye on all of the recent seismic activity but can only pray we’ll not see anything serious. Holland America is happily overly conservative about looking ahead and avoiding weather or other problems by skirting ports or heading back out to sea. Because we’ve spent little time in Seattle, we’ve decided to go a couple of days early to stay in a nice hotel downtown and take a good look around, visiting a decent restaurant or two. We’re planning on seafood, right?

In the meantime, it’s hard to believe but summer seems to be gearing down. The kids are going back to school, there’s Halloween candy in the seasonal aisle at the store (this is how we know what time of year it is around here), and the flowers, while alive, aren’t quite what they were. After an overly rainy couple of months, we’ve had some days in the upper-90’s but they’re about petered out. I’ve been baking very little, despite this post, and Dave smoked a duck for a dinner party the other night when it was simply too warm to turn on the oven. What else did we serve? See below for the plate. Dessert? Homemade strawberry ice cream that, for some reason, didn’t freeze. (This has only happened one other time to me.) I grabbed pistachio gelato out of the freezer and served it with the strawberry mixture surrounding it like a moat. Yes, I threw some sliced strawberries on top. Bunt when you must.

Enjoy the summer food; grill while you can. Bake a few muffins, ok?…

Alyce